Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside. This title celebrates this long tradition with various aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

A portrait of a fiercely independent woman trying, late in life, to escape the clutches of an over-solicitous family

The way of life of Iran's Bakhtiari, a people claiming descent from Fereydun, hero of the Shahnameh, has now all but disappeared, the result of persecution by Reza Shah and the encroachments and temptations of modernity. This book describes their everyday life.

From 1946, the writer Vita Sackville-West wrote a gardening column for The Observer . These articles were later compiled to form a series of books, showing Vita's extensive gardening knowledge, her intense passion for the subject and her lively literary flair.

As his elderly relative lies dying, insurance salesman Mr Chase stands in the wings, waiting to inherit. Yet once in possession, he deems the manor house to be entirely impractical; a burden, whose only useful purpose is to be sold for capital. For him, the house holds none of the charm that had so beguiled its former mistress.

From 1946, the writer Vita Sackville-West wrote a gardening column for The Observer. These articles were later compiled to form a series of books, showing Vita's extensive gardening knowledge, her intense passion for the subject and her lively literary flair.

A portrait of fashionable society at the height of the Edwardian era, revealing, through the lives of Sebastian and Viola, all that was best in it, and all that was to lead to its downfall. The author also wrote All Passion Spent , No Signposts in the Sea and Family History .

In 1926 Vita Sackville-West travelled to Iran to visit her husband, Harold Nicolson, who was serving as a diplomat in Teheran. This work reveals the lesser-known side of one of the twentieth century's most luminous authors.

A collection of correspondence that casts into dramatic relief two personalities as individual and complex as Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf.

From 1946, the writer Vita Sackville-West wrote a gardening column for The Observer . These articles were later compiled to form a series of books, showing Vita's extensive gardening knowledge, her intense passion for the subject and her lively literary flair.

Published in 1926, this prize-winning poem by Vita Sackville-West is a didactic hymn to the Kentish countryside.

From 1946, the writer Vita Sackville-West wrote a gardening column for The Observer . These articles were later compiled to form a series of books, showing Vita's extensive gardening knowledge, her intense passion for the subject and her lively literary flair.

The classic story of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and a unique portrait of the Bloomsbury Group.

This volume collects a wide variety of Vita Sackville-West's works, over half of which, including her travel notebooks, her diaries, some short stories, and her intimate dream notebook, have never been published.

Written by the author of The Land , Portrait of a Marriage and All Passion Spent , this is the story of Mr Jerrold who is proud of his fortune. He has no pride in his sons, but his daughter-in-law is his favourite until she develops a relationship with a rising Labour politician.

Part of the Writers' Britain series, first published in the 1940s. This book offers a brief history of the English country house from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, and of the people who built and lived in them from common squires to kings and queens.

This haunting, elegiac tale about the secret love of a man destined shortly to die, was published in the year before the author's death and is her last novel. She also wrote All Passion Spent , The Edwardians , Family History , Seducers in Ecuador and The Heir .