Stephanie Barczewski. How the Country House Became English London: Reaktion Books, 2023. Pp. 389. $45.00 (cloth).

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the imperial links of British country houses, with Barczewski' s first book, Country Houses and the British Empire (2014), making an important contribution to the debate.Her new book recognizes that empire forms just one part of the story of the country house and turns instead to the less academically fashionable idea of national identity.She situates her analysis both in the context of rising nationalism, which reached its zenith in Britain with Brexit, and the longer history of English national identity.Barczewski seeks to understand the role played by country houses in these processes, and to "explain how they came to possess the attributes that permitted them to be identified as 'English' in the first place" (33).This is done by explaining their role in and experience of moments of disruption (with chapters on the Reformation, Civil Wars, and Age of Revolution), and the duality of English insularity and connectedness (through comparisons with Scotland and Wales, and assessment of the impact of empire and the relationship with continental Europe).The first two chapters examine some of the winners and losers in the profound changes unleashed by the Reformation and Civil Wars.Discussion of the former includes the role of country houses as hiding places for Catholic priests, the confiscation of lands, and the repurposing of monastic buildings following their dissolution.The detail is impressive and profound changes seen in patterns of ownership and physical structure is readily apparent, both in numbers and the series of detailed case studies.Similarly, the Civil Wars brought widespread destruction to many country and manor houses, and the sequestration of estates on both sides is carefully mapped and described through numerous examples.Yet the focus on violence and disruption perhaps elides some quiet continuities: sequestration spelt disaster for some families, but many recovered their lands, sometimes quite quickly; more intriguing is the continuity of names as monastic lands and buildings were subsumed into country houses-a phenomenon evident in Barczewski's detailed appendices, yet goes unmentioned.Chapter 3 offers a nuanced reading of the political significance of architectural styles in the eighteenth century, not least in the discussion of gothic architecture.In avoiding simple stereotypes, Barczewski reveals the ways in which country houses were tied to the complexities of English politics.There is a danger of course in viewing everything through a self-aware political lens: gothic could be about status and taste as well as identity and ideology.These three chapters are alive with the people who built, owned, lived in, or destroyed country houses; but it is not always clear what their collected voices tell us about the distinctiveness of the English country houses or the development of English identity.Both of these come to the fore in the second half of the book.The discussion of why no single British style of country house emerged is nuanced and deeply historicized, and sheds