A house unlocked

""'I thought that I would see if the private life of a house could be made to bear witness to the public traumas of a century'. Here Penelope Lively recalls Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset her grandparents bought in 1923. Through the sometimes strange, unfamiliar articles there - the gong stand, the picnic rug, the potted meat jars and bon bon dishes - she charts the social changes and transforming moments of the twentieth century. Changing attitudes to social class, the tension between town and country, how one learns to see the world: all are examined in this eloquent, fascinating memoir."--BOOK JACKET."@en
"The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house, Golsoncott. Fifty years later she began to piece together the lives of those she knew, unearthing the stories surrounding the house and family and brilliantly evoking the contrasts between life today and the way they lived then."@en
"Penelope Lively recalls Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset her grandparents bought in 1923. Back then the running of the house required the services of eleven people; by 1990's this infrastructure was remembered only in the wages book buried in the hall chest and the bell system in the pantry. Golsoncott was touched by the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century; the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Blitz. All left their mark on the house, if you know where to look."@en