This volume recounts an odyssey through country houses in the years following World War II. Most had been requisitioned by the armed forces and, when de-requisitioned, were left to stand empty awaiting their owners' return. It was then that John Harris first discovered country houses.

The magnificent country houses built in Britain between 1890 and 1939 were the last monuments to a vanishing age. Many of these great mammoths of domestic architecture were unsuited to the changes in economic and social priorities that followed the two world wars, and rapidly became extinct. Those that survive, however, provide tangible evidence of the life and death of an extraordinarily prosperous age.The fascinating world, so vividly depicted in Evelyn Waughs Brideshead Revisited, can now be viewed from a new perspective. The Last Country Houses will enlighten all those interested in glimpsing the lost life style of another age.

Of all the photographs in Country Life's archives, none are more poignant or intriguing than the images of houses that have been lost. This text puts the lost country houses of England in historical context and explains why so many were destroyed.