Much of what Lucinda Lambton, as an English writer, has discovered for herself is what Americans raised on the East Coast have known all their lives: those enclaves of earlier cultures brought from the Old World and now better preserved in the New. For such natives, her lavishly illustrated book offers the pleasures of recognition. Others, fed only on myths about America, will be amazed by what she reveals.

'Whereas in our little island', she writes, 'the waves of modernity have been able to reach and swamp almost everywhere, in giant America, this is by no means the case. Thanks to the scale of the country as well as the sensibilities of so many Americans,