Judith S. Lewis Archives - Aspects of History

The Country House at War – Judith S. Lewis Interviewed

The author discusses her book with Elizabeth Buchan and tells of a serendipitous discovery, wartime requisition, eviction, and the stories she uncovered in researching the experiences of the British upper classes during the Second World War.

Judith S. Lewis

Welcome to Aspects of History, Judith. You say that your book took shape from a serendipitous tourist moment. What was that? I visited Audley End in Essex. Beautiful house, palatial in size. Capability Brown gardens. There was an exhibit about the war years, when the...

The Country House at War: A Story of Loss, Reinvention and the Birth of a New Britain, by Judith S. Lewis

A fascinatingly detailed history depicts how wartime hardship, requisitioning and profound social change transformed Britain’s great houses and irrevocably altered the world that sustained them.

Elizabeth Buchan

G.M. Trevelyan spotted it in September 1939. He feared, he wrote, that the England ‘of an old song’ was coming to an end. By that, as Judith S. Lewis explains in her account The Country House at War, he meant ‘a green and pleasant land presided over by intelligent and...

When the Country House Went to War

Wartime requisitioning of Britain’s country houses transformed the lives of owners, servants and occupiers and the consequences were far-reaching.

Judith S. Lewis

What was it like to have your house requisitioned during the war? To share your home with occupiers, whether Land Girls, POWs, soldiers, or spies? What compensation did families receive for the loss of their homes? And how did it all work? These were the questions I...