ADULT Event
Literary Lunch with Dan Cruickshank – The English House
Guildford County Club
“A fascinating new account of the history of the English house, from the country’s preeminent architectural historian
Cruickshank’s enthusiasm for England’s vernacular architecture shines through every infectious sentence of this glorious book... A triumph.”
Enjoy a two-course lunch and glass of wine in the company of bestselling author, Dan Cruickshank.
Join Dan as he tells the story of the superbly elegant early eighteenth-century Pallant House in Chichester. It’s the story of 19 Princelet Street in Spitafields, built for a Huguenot silk-weaver, ultimately a synagogue. It’s also the story of – among others – a row of two-up, two-downs in Toxteth, a block of flats in London’s East End, and what Ideal Home’s magazine described in 1926 as Britain’s ‘first modern house’ – in Northampton.
Together these buildings reveal the ways in which English homes have developed and changed over the past few centuries. At the same time, as Dan Cruickshank shows, they have much to tell us about the lives of their first occupants: their aspirations, their struggles, their place within society and relationship with their local community. The English House brilliantly weaves these two strands together, blending architectural and social history to create a series of brilliantly observed portraits of fascinating buildings.
about the author
Dan Cruickshank is an architectural historian and television presenter. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has sat on the Executive Committee of the Georgian Group, and the Architectural Panel of the National Trust. His recent work includes the BBC television programmes Civilisation Under Attack (2015) and At Home with the British (2016), and the books A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings (2015) and Spitalfields (2016). He lives in London.
