Heritage: A History of How We Conserve Our Past

Description

What is heritage? When was it invented? What is its place in the world today? What is its place tomorrow? Heritage is all around us: millions belong to its organisations, tens of thousands volunteer for it, and politicians pay lip service to it. When the Victorians began to employ the term in something approaching the modern sense, they applied it to cathedrals, castles, villages and certain landscapes. Since then a multiplicity of heritage labels have arisen, cultural and commercial, tangible and intangible - for just as every era has its notion of heritage, so does every social group, and every generation. In Heritage, James Stourton focuses on elements of our cultural and natural environment that have been deliberately preserved: the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattersall Castle, and the works of art inside them. He charts two heroic periods of conservation - the 1880s and the 1960s - and considers whether threats of wealth, rampant development and complacency are similar in the present day. Heritage is both a story of crisis and profound change in public perception, and one of hope and regeneration.

James Stourton is a British art historian, a former Chairman of Sotheby's UK and the author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorized biography of Kenneth Clark. Stourton frequently lectures to Cambridge University History of Art Faculty, Sotheby's Institute of Education and The Art Fund, and is a senior fellow of the Institute of Historical Research. He also sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel which meets to decide what constitutes heritage and should be saved for the nation.

A fascinating, erudite, engaging - and much needed - book. * Neil MacGregor * Compelling and thought-provoking, this book not only explores how Britain's rich and diverse heritage has been conserved (and in some cases destroyed) in the past, but offers a ray of hope for its future -- Tracy Borman [A] huge, energetic and tightly written tome on the two-and-half-century history of conservation battles in our homeland... A masterful, dynamic and extremely readable survey of one the major issues of our times. Or all times * Literary Review * It not only covers the conservation and protection of our buildings and landscapes, but also the wider cultural aspects * This England * PRAISE FOR JAMES STOURTON: 'Richly detailed, colourful and astute and it moves at a cracking pace... A resplendent biography' The Sunday Times. 'The deft weaving of architectural, social and contemporary history will reveal unexpected pleasures' Art Quarterly. 'This lavishly illustrated compendium suggests that the age of elegance endures' Mail on Sunday. 'Wonderfully learned, gossipy and instructive... The historical research is formidable... Witty, informative and endlessly fascinating' * Literary Review *