"The history of English houses in the past twenty-five years has proved to be infinitely more positive, and the view of their future more optimistic, than seemed conceivable at the time of The Destruction of the Country House exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1974-75 when their very existence was threatened by new taxes. This book, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Historic Houses Association, looks at what has happened, what has been saved and what lost, what has been achieved through the development and improvement of legislation and by private owners as well as public bodies, what are the current problems, why professional thinking has broadened out and how public opinion has changed. It tells not only a remarkable and still largely unrecognised story but it relates it to the first period of recovery, after the Second World War, that began in 1948 with the appointment of the Gowers Committee to consider the future of historic houses and was shattered by the events of the mid 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.