Video: Lady Antonia Fraser in her writing room

Enchanting.
http://www.antoniafraser.com/

W House Tours: "The Marchioness"

"A member of the fabled and complicated Guinness family by birth and marriage, Lindy, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, presides over Clandeboyne, an astounding 2,000-acre estate in Northern Ireland."
Featured in America's fashion bible, W Magazine. Link

England's Glory: The Country House

Image: Knole House
This delightful review from the mid-1980's expresses the power over the imagination which the country house exerts. Poetic, wonderfully written.
Link

Victorian Taxidermy - an Exploration

This article is a good introduction to the somewhat arcane but - to Sloane Rangers and country house visitors - familiar world of taxidermy.

Britain's Ten Best Country Houses to Lease

Bradley House

"The house managed the neat trick of being grand without being in the least formal. I realised that this was how a manor house would be if I owned one myself: full of books and comfy sofas and log fires. There were piano duets in the music room, chess games half-finished in the library, a great gaggle of muddy wellies inside the back door and a kitchen that was the warm heart of the house.
Every morning while the others slept, I went about the house opening the heavy curtains and the tall wooden shutters, a ritual that took a good quarter of an hour. As light flooded into the rooms, the view was revealed piece by piece – the curving drive encircling the fountain, the flat croquet lawn, the mature trees of a Wiltshire parkland, the decorative sheep on the far side of the ha-ha and the distant pastures rising to the heights of Brimstone Hill. Every evening, we had drinks in the Drawing Room in front of a roaring fire before we repaired to boisterous candlelit meals at the long dining table."
Read more here.

Chandeliers

Sloaniture and Sloanishings: This Ranger shopped for chandeliers this month. There are so many to choose from!
The steampunk Venetian glass dirigible and the crystal ship charmed me. You can see more here.