The British are a nation of house obsessives. Take a look at a National Trust car park at this time of year – or, more likely, the overflow car park. Clive Aslet, former editor of Country Life, is a learned guide to this obsession. Using twenty-one English houses – from the stone-built Norman Boothby Pagnell manor house near Grantham to the Butterfly House, a twenty-first-century glass horror in Surrey – Aslet navigates a winding yet engaging path through building practices and domestic habits over the centuries. 

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