Reviews for Nancy Lancaster : her life, her world, her art
Publishers Weekly
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Lancaster, who died in 1994 at the age of 93, was a decorator and designer who specialized in stately homes and their gardens. Her elegant biography?which has all the earmarks of an officially sanctioned work?is, like its subject, something of an elaborately maintained anachronism, in which meticulously described rooms are far more important than the people who inhabit them. Lancaster was born in Virginia. One of her aunts became Lady Astor, another the wife of artist Charles Dana Gibson (and a prototype of the Gibson Girl). After a brief marriage to a Marshall Field heir, she married Ronald Tree, a future Conservative member of Parliament, settled in England and turned her hand to interior decoration. After two sons and Nancy's nervous breakdown, the Tree marriage ended in divorce and she married a Colonel Lancaster, who is described as ``a cad.'' Becker, a contributor to Interview and House Beautiful, built his uncritical bio around his subject's own chatty mini-autobiography, which runs in boldface through the book in much the same way that the words of Jesus appear in red type in some editions of the New Testament. Photos. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Romantic family history meets interior design and gardening in this life of Virginia-born Nancy Lancaster, who gets credit here for creating the English Country style--homey chintz in baronial spaces. Freelance writer Becker skillfully melds third-person biography and first-person memoir (based on Lancaster's writings and Becker's interviews with her) in this unusual narrative. Lancaster's life story begins in a cottage in Virginia, where she was born, and ends in a cottage in England, where she died in August 1994 at the age of 96. In between were three husbands and a life of riding, shooting, and shopping for the furniture and fixtures that would justify her reputation as an interior designer. It was Lancaster's talent to bring comfort and warmth to tired and gloomy manor rooms without damaging a sense of history and authentic detail. Born to the oldest of the famously beautiful Langhorne sisters--her aunts included Lady Astor and the wife of artist Charles Dana Gibson--Lancaster first married Henry Field (of Chicago's Marshall Field family). Widowed within five months, she next married Ronald Tree, a wealthy American who made his home in England and his reputation as a member of Parliament. It was as Mrs. Tree that Lancaster became known as a designer and hostess in a series of houses that culminated in Ditchley, the English manor where Winston Churchill spent weekends during WW II. After a divorce from Tree and a brief third marriage (to one Jubie Lancaster), she bought a decorating business, Colefax and Fowler, which became one of England's most prestigious firms. A manual of room arrangement and garden design combined with a view of a now-extinct lifestyle where newspapers were ironed for weekend guests that should capture students of design and history. (16 pages color photos, 150 b&w photos, not seen)
Library Journal
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Considered one of the grande dames of interior design, Lancaster created, through her firm Colefax and Fowler, the "English country look" of faded elegance accented with flowers and chintz. Born a Langhorne of Virginia (her aunts included Nancy Astor, the first female Member of Parliament, and Irene Gibson, whose illustrator husband immortalized her as the Gibson Girl), Nancy married Ronald Tree and lived her adult life in English society, where she earned her reputation from the decoration of her own homes. Journalist Becker allows Lancaster to tell her own story, focusing on her homes and gardens while giving an entertaining description of wealthy Anglo-American life during the 20th century. Appropriate for larger biography and design collections.?Gayle A. Williamson, formerly with Fashion Inst. of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Nancy Lancaster (1897-1994) was a daughter of one of the famous Langhorne sisters of Virginia, one of whom became Lady Astor, the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, while another married illustrator Charles Dana Gibson and became the original so-called Gibson girl, a "look" popular after the turn of the century. Nancy was born on the Langhorne family estate, over which her grandfather, a Confederate veteran, reigned as benevolent monarch. Excerpts of her memoir alternate with excerpts of biographical narrative by writer Becker to reveal luscious details of a life of privilege--from birth through childhood, to schooling in Europe, to a first marriage to the grandson of Chicago magnate Marshall Field, to a subsequent marriage to a handsome, rich Englishman, to her development as a noted interior decorator and garden designer. This is excellent social history but of a rarefied kind; not all readers will be interested in this tale of upper-class living, well presented though it is. (Reviewed Feb. 1, 1996)0394567919Brad Hooper
