Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The National Trust is well known as the owner and protector of beautiful landscape and even whole villages. Its houses and gardens are amongst the prime tourist attractions in this country. Thanks to all this from tiny beginnings in 1895 it has expanded into a great organization currently with 3.8 million members 255000 hectares of land (second in size only to the Forestry Commission) 709 miles of coastline and more than 350 properties from grand houses to back-to-backs and a workhouse not to mention gardens and parks ancient monuments and nature reserves all open to the public. What is much less well-known ? and is sometimes not even appreciated by visitors to the houses – is that it also owns remarkable collections of pictures. Taken together they number over 12000 oil paintings. That is larger than the collections of any other institution including those that are now vested in the National Gallery or Royal Collections Trust. I mention this last advisedly because my family has been associated with the National Trust from its very beginnings. Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter Princess Louise (1848-1939) who was a sculptress and a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was its Vice- President from its first formal meeting and then its third President from 1902 – when she opened its first acquisition in the Lake District Brandlehow until her death. In 1944 following a rebuff by the then Princess Royal who felt that the Trust’s ownership of land was tantamount to nationalization she was succeeded by my Great Grandmother Queen Mary (1867-1953). She in turn was succeeded by me