The Australians at Geneva: internationalist diplomacy in the interwar years

Abstract

railways. Perry examines these phenomena in contrasting properties such as Danson Park in Bexleyheath in London and the grandiloquent Harewood in Yorkshire. She also closely examines the slavery connections of Bath and the remarkable relationship with the Wye valley of the estate at Piercefield, Monmouthshire. Another of her ‘tainted landscapes’ as she calls them, is around Penrhyn Castle in North Wales. After these illuminatingly detailed chapters, she moves on to a relatively swift examination of some more ‘remote’ locations in the Lake District and Scotland. A notable characteristic of Perry’s work, as she follows these developments through many English, Welsh and Scottish country estates, is to link them to literary expressions in prose and poetry, to furniture and decorative styles (for example, in the use of the opulent tropical hard wood mahogany in doors and panelling) and even, in passing ways, to cuisine and diet. As an architect herself, she is strongly influenced by the contexts and framing of structures. This all makes for an impressive, highly readable, and beautifully illustrated book. It therefore may seem a little carping to indicate that if this reviewer has any criticism at all, it is that the material on Scotland, for example, is relatively so slight and, for the unwary reader, not always accurate. For example, she seems to give the (perhaps unintended) impression that Port Glasgow is equivalent to the port of Glasgow, two very different locations. The entire area of the remarkable ‘Merchant City’ in Glasgow, to the west of the city’s original medieval heartland (now largely destroyed apart from the cathedral), is every bit as much as Bath almost entirely based on the Atlantic trades. Moreover, her geographical focus is restricted to the west and the fact is that there are equally many examples of slave money that went into buildings, estates and landscapes in eastern Scotland. Some of these are familiar to me. She mentions the amazingly valuable Royal Holloway slavery compensation data base, but it does lie somewhat outside her period. If we carry the story forward, therefore, it becomes obvious that the extraordinary amounts of money that slave owners received from government for the liberation of their slaves was another massive way in which extensive funds were fed into country houses, landscapes and environmental developments. But that perhaps should be the subject of another book.