Gilding the acorn

the long version

Everyone think the National Trust is A Good Thing. Yet few know anything about it. Now, for the first time in its hundred-year history, an outsider examines Britain's largest private landowner. And its biggest, richest charity. All that the National Trust owns - hundreds miles of coast and tens of thousands of acres of countryside, great gardens and opulent country houses - is held for our benefit and the enjoyment of coming generations. But is the Trust an enlightened landlord or has it instead become a society for the preservation of fantasies about how things used to be? Are we paying too much for the pleasure of endlessly revisiting Brideshead? And not just in pounds and pence. Hundreds of men and women have been interviewed to find the answers to the questions raised in this book. Lords and Ladies, farmers and gardeners, office staff, coastal wardens and foresters tell their lively, revealing stories.