“A deluge of printed matter pours over the world”, F. R. Leavis proclaimed in his doctoral thesis of 1924. An excess of low-quality verbiage, in the view of this young literary scholar, was doing harm

The acquisition of houses by the National Trust from the 1930s had less to do with the impoverishment of aristocratic families than the industrial wealth of bachelor donors, as Michael Hall reveals

“As movers and the moved both know”, John Updike noted, “books are heavy freight ... They make us think twice about changing addresses.” Books: A manifesto, or, How to build a library begins with the

“This tremendous aggregate of a book has many of the characteristics of a Festschrift assembled to honour some Great Influencer”: so, in 1973, the architectural historian Priscilla Metcalf began the f

I have always wanted to live in a period property, and the quirkiness of this house is so appealing to me,’ says artist Mink Yip of her Worcestershire home. ‘It’s actually made up of three old propert

The beauty of Lancashire’s Lune valley emerges from ...