Over 150 superb photographs from the Country Life archive are selected especially here to highlight 25 major houses and their architects in a stunning and astoundingly thorough display  With authority and verve, distinguished architectural theorist David Watkin takes a fresh and innovative look at the traditional British country house in this gorgeous illustrated history book. Rather than focus on any given period, he shows instead how classicism has been a seminal influence on British and American architecture since the 17th century through to the waning of modernist design in the present day. Consisting of five parts, sections cover everything from the birth of English classicism to the richness of the Italian Renaissance revival?seen, for example, in Kingston Lacy and Brodsworth Hall. An interesting parallel movement in America is also touched upon that shows how, from Thomas Jefferson"s Monticello designs in pre-Revolutionary war times to the stunning 20th-century Villa Vizcaya, Florida, built in 1916, the same persisting respect for classical forms is thoroughly evident. This lovely photographic tome should appeal to anyone interested in the influences that have formed the grand tradition of the British country house.