Last April I mentioned a series of small paperbacks in a series called Englush Journeys. I did pick some up at the time but they've sat resolutely in the junk room with a number of other books awaiting my attention.
Anyway I finished Simon Scarrow's rather good Young Bloods (first in a series about Napoleon and Wellington) and decided the time had come for something different.
The first book I picked up was Some Country Owners and their Houses by James Lees-Milne. Lees-Milne travelled around the country in the forties trying to obtain properties for the National Trust and he wrote a series of diaries at the time of which this is a very brief extract.
The book is divided in two with the first being about houses that eventually went to the National Trust and the second of houses he visited that didn't. I've just read part 1 so far.
Now I think I've found a rather fundamental flaw. It says of Sherborne Castle that it was eventually bequeathed to the National Trust, now as far as I know its still in private hands! The error is not Lees-Milne's but editor Michael Bloch. You really can't believe everything you read.
I've enjoyed what I've read so far and I've ordered some of his diaries.
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