Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles
Knole is best-known as the family home of writer Vita Sackville-West and famously memorialized in her lover Virginia Woolf's elegiac novel Orlando, It's a Renaissance palace in Kent that, with 365 rooms and spread over four acres, is one of the largest private houses in England. Knole has been inhabited for the past 400 years by 13 generations of a single family, the Sackvilles. Elizabeth I's immensely wealthy cousin Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, an acclaimed poet and moderately corrupt but quite successful politician, acquired Knole in 1604 and at the age of 70 embarked on a massive building program, turning a ramshackle medieval mansion (previously owned by Henry VIII and Elizabeth) into a great show house.   The author relates this rich history of Knole inhabitants, filled with gadabouts, swashbuckling royalists, deft politicians, art collectors, and schemers sure to enchant and delight readers. The author--who as the 7th Lord Sackville shares the house with the National Trust and 80,000 annual visitors--pens candid, intelligent, insightful mini-biographies of the various residents, giving readers a glimpse into England's aristocratic heritage while whetting anglophiles' appetites to see Knole for themselves. Photos.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.