Jewish Country Houses

This is a magnificent work of scholarship - it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight. * Edmund de Waal *
I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page. It sets the familiar country house story in a new, Europe-wide landscape, and tells a tale of often tragic splendour. The authors show that these are more than just houses - they are monuments to the long nineteenth-century battle between prejudice and assimilation, played out in magnificent buildings and princely collections. * Neil MacGregor *
A fascinating book about a long-forgotten world. * Hadley Freeman *
An absorbing, richly-textured history that illuminates how the aspirations of an ascendant Jewish elite transformed the traditional notion of the country house from a site of settled privilege into a dynamic microcosm of bold self-inscription - a catalyst for new forms of sociability, patronage, art collecting, and philanthropy. Interweaving a wide array of sources and perspectives from different cultures, these essays explore gripping tales of belonging and rejection, memory and erasure, dispossession and resilience. * Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor Emerita Princeton University, The Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor, Institute of Fine Art, New York University *
This lusciously illustrated book provides an essential tour of the Jewish country houses of Europe and the UK. Each of the thirteen essays furnishes an authoritative understanding of a specific house and uses a combination of new and historic images to showcase the lives of the inhabitants and the homes' rich interiors. The final essay compares this tradition to Jewish American country houses. A must-have book for anyone interested in elegant houses or Jewish history. * Laura Leibman *
An utterly absorbing book taking in architecture, art creation, patronage and collecting. it is a triumph of sensitive editing and an expression of compelling intellectual collaboration. -- Timothy Mowl * Country Life *
An impressively researched and illustrated book -- Katharine Spurrier * Daily Mail *
Sheds new light on a previously overlooked category of country houses owned, renovated, and at times built by Jews and individuals of Jewish descent * Jewish News *
Magnificent -- Fiona McKenzie Johnston * House & Garden *
A highly original approach to country house history, it combines a scholarly understanding of its subject with beautiful new photographs of their rich interiors, bolstered by historical images. A nuanced story of prejudice, identity and assimilation that's also stunning to look at, this is a book with a head as well as a heart. * The Idler *
Impressively illustrated * The Spectator *