Country Houses; Ickworth

 Country Houses – Somebody’s Got to Live in Them

 

 

One battlefield of the present cultural wars concerns country houses, specifically those now in the care of the National Trust. It seems (what a surprise) that many of these, mainly dating from the time of the acceleration of Britain’s imperial achievements in the C18, were paid for by fortunes derived from slavery in the Americas.

Chunks of Empire go missing at Tate Britain

Chunks of Empire go missing at Tate Britain

The main impression I took from the Tate’s Artists and Empire exhibition is that the visual arts don’t come close to the written arts in reflecting the complexities, the dark corners and the brighter corners of Britain’s chequered Empire.