Life in the French country house

the long version

"Life in the French Country House is a perceptive and witty account of the French upper classes at home, showing how their way of life and its setting of the chateaux, manoirs and gentilhommeries of the French countryside - evolved through the centuries, inextricably linked together, to create a society admired and emulated throughout Europe." "This book is concerned not just with the variety, wealth and beauty of the chateaux themselves, but with how they reflected in their interior decoration and organization the manners and mores of their occupants - how the different rooms were lived in, how the French lifestyle changed over the decades, and how the design and decoration of the buildings developed to accommodate it."--BOOK JACKET.