Adrian Tinniswood - The Power and The Glory

30:15To a certain extent, you know. I mean, they were accepted in the end because they were a very close part of Edward VII's circle. Reuben Sassoon and Albert Sassoon. These guys are part of a Baghdadi Jewish banking family, an import family with interest in Bombay and in Persia, as it was then. They're immensely rich. They are part of Edward VII Circle, and that helps. But then you've got Philip Sassoon, who is a little bit later than my book, but Philip Sassoon is the next generation. And yes, he's accepted. I mean, he's part of the government. He's, everyone wants to go to his parties, but there's still this kind of coded racism.

30:59He's still, you know, he's referred to, he's exotic, he's Oriental. And what they mean is he's Jewish, but they don't like it. And then again, you get this crazy notion, a constant reminder that history doesn't work like you expect it to work. So I don't know if your listeners, your viewers will know of Oswald Mosley. Oswald Mosley was the leader of the British fascist movement in the 1930s. He was a pig. He was horrible. However, he was a big friend of Philip Sassoon's. In fact, he met his wife at one of Philip Sassoon's parties. Now, you're not supposed to get kind of, you know, this neo-Nazi hobnobbing with a Jewish banker.

31:41And that's because, you know, people are people. Never mind the ideas or the ideologies. You see somebody socially, you get on with them and you just go for it. Yeah, that's funny. So on this, when I was reading your book and you started bringing up the Orientalism, I did a full year of Islamic civilization in college. Orientalism plays widely into a lot of the study of Islamic civilization and the Ottoman Empire and things of that nature. You talk about the Orientalization and also that through the lens of India and how it really affects the architecture of certain parts of these country houses or these estates.

32:19I think you used an example of one of the billiards room was effectively designed in an Indian fashion with very beautiful woods and carvings. And explain how that affected the country house. Yeah, I mean, you've got a couple of things going on there. One is that in whatever it is, 1870-odd, 1880-odd, Queen Victoria is formally announced as Empress of India. That is her title. She becomes Empress of India. And it's a means of unifying the various states in India that have basically been taken by the East India Company and by the British Army. But that moment when she becomes Empress of India causes a growth, a renaissance, if you like, of interest in all things Indian.

33:09and the billiard room that you refer to, the Duke of Connell's billiard room at Bagshot Park, it didn't just contain Indian motifs and decoration. They sent Indian craftsmen over from Lahore, it was. I mean, it was now Pakistan, isn't it? It was then India. They send craftsmen over to create this thing. Queen Victoria herself, she likes it so much that at her own, one of her own country houses, Osborne on the Isle of Wight in the south of England, She has a Durbar room built by an Indian architect and designer, Bairam Singh. And, you know, it just drips with wonderful, wonderful Rajput architecture and decoration.

33:52And you've got, you know, one of the most intriguing and sad figures in all this is Duleep Singh, who was the last Maharaj of the Sikh Empire. and Dulip Singh had his empire taken from him by the East India Company in the mid-century. He's then, he's only a boy. He's brought over to England. He's given a pension. He becomes friendly with Queen Victoria's kids and having rented a succession of houses, this goes back to your point earlier on, he rents a succession of houses, mainly for shooting because he's a great sportsman. And eventually he buys a shooting estate in the east of England, Elverdon it's called, and he has a rather ordinary Italianate block of a country house built for him by an architect called John Norton.

34:44And you look at it, you think, nah, it's all right. You step inside and he just drips with Rajput decoration and carvings. They writhe all over the walls and ceilings. It's the most fabulous, fabulous house. It didn't bring Duluth Singh happiness. He went bankrupt. he left his wife and went off with a barmaid called Ada and eventually died quite young. He had a stroke. But there was a time, certainly, you know, I hesitate and I stutter because it's so difficult. He's accepted and yet he's not. You know, Queen Victoria accepts him, but ultimately he's a pet. He's a pet. You know, he's a curiosity.

35:24He's fun. When in some ways he was societally jailed because it's like, you know, to your point, he's accepted because the queen accepts him, not because everyone said, oh, I really like him. You know, he's fun. It was kind of like, you know, by way of queen is how I read into your book. And also, again, his children, he had one of his children that were more accepted in society than he was. So, again, he's caught in that I'm the first generation and therefore I'm still awkward. You know, another thing. So media wise, because all the media you're talking about, the, you know, the magazines or the gazettes or whatever was being used to publish this.

36:03So how did you determine like who kept the roles of who was noble or not? How would you determine, you know, who had peerage, for example? Well, you've got I mean, this is quite a complex issue. You've got the College of Arms who, you know, who give arms. you've got um you've got your bibles like burke's peerage and de brett's which you know give a long lineage of who's who so it's it's you know it it's it's not a case of keeping keeping the the information like you're in a library or anything people just knew who was who you know there's no question and and who's invited as well that's the other thing you know who who yeah who is part of Parties.

36:49Exactly, exactly. So at that time, because there were obviously publications tied to country houses, though. So they would document whose house is owned, whose house is being remodeled. Teach us about those publications. Yeah, I mean, you've got magazines like Country Life, which weren't really, I mean, they're not actually aimed at landed society. They're aimed at people that aspire to be part of Landed Society, you know. Sure. And there's a difference there, I think. And of course, Landed Society reads them because it's nice to read something about yourself, which is saying what a great person you are.

37:31It's the influence of that era, yeah. It is. It really is. And they also conjure up a very romantic view of the country house and the past. You know, a lot of the writing around the turn of the century on country houses is about houses that are 400 years old, 500 years old, houses with moats and swans gliding on the moat, you know, and tall chimneys and long galleries filled with kind of carvings. It's a mythic view of the past. And it's a view of the past which gains strength as English society starts to disintegrate, as traditional values start to go, in Marxist terms, as a rising proletariat start to challenge the old feudal ways, and indeed the bourgeoisie seek to challenge those feudal ways.

38:29And it's interesting that I think in the 1920s you have the first British prime minister, Bonal Law, who didn't have a country house of his own. He's the first one in all the history of Britain. And that's very telling. The architecture of these houses. So if I'm going to walk into a country house, what would be typical rooms that I would run into, you know, if I was going to do a tour of someone's country house on a Saturday morning, what kind of rooms would I be seeing in that house? So if we're looking at a Victorian or an Edwardian, you know, a new build, you would typically go into a great hall.

39:09And by the beginning of the 20th century, that great hall is turning into something of a living hall. You know, it's got sofas in it. People gather around the fire in these things. Oh, they gather around the fire because the room is so damn cold. I mean, that's one reason for huddling by the fire. But you would have a great hall, which is a kind of quasi-public introduction to the house. then typically you would have male and female zones you would have a boudoir and a drawing room which were essentially female governed areas you would have a library and study which are male areas a morning room is female and you'd have a dining room which is kind of an in-between area sure so you'd have a you know a typical victorian awarding country house great hall drawing room morning room library study dining room and then you would have a servant swing the bedrooms are all upstairs which they hadn't been in the 16th or 17th century but now the bedrooms are up on my first floor your second floor they're um they're upstairs anyway and then the the um the servants of whom there may be half a dozen or 10 there may be 20 or 30 indoor servants depending on the size of the house and they will be in a self-contained wing they will they will there's a kind of a cultural social apartheid going on the upstairs and downstairs there is a green bay's door literally a green bay's door because it um it's a soundproofing device which separates the two communities now you can only do that because you've got now got an efficient bell pull system which allows you to summon servants at a distance before you had a bell pull system in the 17th the early 18th centuries, you had to yell.

40:51You had to yell for a servant. You had to lean over the banister rail and shout. So because of that, servants tended to be in the main body of the house, waiting to be summoned. Well, now you put them in a separate block. And they are predominantly lower middle class and working class or labouring class drawn from there. Not all of them. I don't know how far we want to go into the composition of the downstairs side of the house but in a big house you would have a chef who was maybe french or belgian or swiss a male chef um you would have um the woman of the house might have a swiss ladies maid the man of the house would have a valet and then we've got kitchen stuff we've got housemates as i say we may have the asters had 28 indoor servants around about the end of the um post world war.

41:44It's a lot of people. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management. At Smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the Smead funds have a proven track record of long-term outperformance. If you're an investor who fears stock market failure like I do and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit SmeadCap.com. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses.

42:23Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. So what I'd love to go to next is how problematic was a castle? I mean, the thing I took away is like the last thing I want to get for a country house is a castle because it seems that that was a very tough building to work, live in, do anything with to modernize. Is that pretty fair? Yeah, but it's old. It's old. And because it's old, it's attractive. It's cool. Yeah. It's cool. Exactly. Exactly. And people put up with a lot. I mean, there are a number of castles that are built or modernised in the period.

43:10One of my favourites is Cardiff Castle, which is not a country house, but it's right in the centre of Cardiff in Wales. But it's a huge medieval castle, which is, it had been remodelled in the 18th century. And then the Marcus of Bute and his architect, William Burgess, they modernise it again in the 1860s and 70s. And they turn it into what they think a castle should be. So they fill it with paintings and statues of damsels in distress and knights in armour. And the fireplaces, the chimney pieces have battlements on them. It's an exquisitely romantic house. It really is. It's also slightly weird.

43:54William Burgess had a drug habit, the architect. It comes out every now and then. Cardiff is the only house I know where the duck-billed platypus is used as a decorative motif. You see them crawling all over the library. There are monkeys everywhere. Monkeys everywhere in the dining room at Cardiff Castle. There is a freeze of monkeys going down the panelling, and one of those monkeys, they're carved in wood, but one of those monkeys has real ivory teeth. And he has a nut in his mouth between his teeth. And the Marcus of Butte used to have to ram this nut down his throat. And that was the way to summon the butler to bring the servants to get the food into the dining room.

44:38It's so weird, so eccentric, but it's a wonderful house. Really wonderful. I was going to pivot to the garden because you talk about the garden. I thought the most interesting question tied to the garden. And you pose, I think this is from a publication that you quote. quote, the question at issue is a very simple one. Is the garden to be considered in relation to the house and as an integral part of the design, which depends for its success on the combined effect of house and garden, or is the house to be ignored in dealing with the garden? End quote. Didn't it just depend on the owner's view of that question?

45:17well yeah but it's there's a battle in the 1890s between architects and plantsmen the plantsmen led by figures like William Robinson who is a plant was a plantsman you get the plantsmen saying it's all about flowers it's all about plants you get the architects saying it's all about structure you know if the structure's all right yeah you can put in a few flowers here and there if you like but basically it's about the terracing and the steps and the ornamental pool. And this was a really vicious battle. It took, in a way, it took two of the most famous garden designers of the period, Edwin Lutyens, the architect, and Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer, who worked together to create some of the finest gardens in Edwardian England.

46:08So they would work, you know, Lutyens would work on the structure together with Jekyll, who worked on the planting. And they came up with some beautiful, beautiful things. But it was a real live issue in the 1890s, 1900s. And if an architect remodeled your house or built your house, he may also design the garden and leave the plantsman to just kind of fill in the gaps, which the plantsman used to get really annoyed about. Sure. So I also thought a lot about the amenities because you discuss various amenities. So, for example, you know, gas used for lighting and you commented on one of the houses, it used sewer gas and you thought it was just for lighting.

46:50And no, it was actually to just get rid of the sewer gas, which could be a problem to the house. This was Ten Hall Towers in the English Midlands where a guy called Thornycroft, he had to be fair, he had a thing about sewer gas. He was really worried about sewer gas. He thought sewer gas was going to kill us all. So, yes, he invented this elaborate system of chimneys and towers, which took the sewer gas up from the sewers and burned it off. He thought every street in London should have some kind of sewer gas outlet. He was more than a little crazy. This is the guy who wanted to pipe fresh air from the English coast into London so that Londoners could have fresh air.

47:34Not surprisingly, he didn't find any takers. Sure. That's funny. How about hot and cold water? Because you talked about some of the issues that depending on the estate, you know, how do you get water uphill, for example, could be an issue. How would they get hot water, though? Yeah, I mean, you've got coal fires. You've got copper, you know, sort of tanks that you could heat. You've got boilers that you could heat. And, of course, you've got servants who could bring buckets of hot water, you know, to fill the bath in your bedroom. some of the older families are quite slow to adopt new technology like hot and cold running water like bathrooms and that's because they've already got labor saving devices they're called servants you know sure you're you're not carrying the coal up and down the prehistoric machine yeah exactly exactly so they're quite slow and you tend go on sorry i was gonna say and you get into the There's the tension, right?

48:35There's the tension of, it's like, I literally put in my notes in your book, Luddites, right? You get the Orwellian tension of, well, do we upgrade to the newest machine? Because it might cost Bob his job. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And, you know, this goes back to something you were talking about earlier, that that social noblesse oblige, if you like, that social obligation to your employees and to your tenants and to the people on your estate is really strong in a lot of cases. And so, yes, they were quite strong. You tend to find, not always, but you tend to find, it's the nouveau riche industrialist who is the early adopter of new technology because he or she, but usually he, he's found out what it will do in his factory.

49:23It will make him a lot of money, new technology will. So he's happy to bring it into the house. He's happy to light the house with gas or electricity, of course. He's happy to get a motor car and do away with his stable hands and his horses because he's seen what technology can do for him. Sure. You also talk about the tension, though, of what it's like to have all this help in the house. So, for example, you obviously would have a very close relationship, which, you know, got more departed as they were more removed. But they would know a lot about the families that are in these houses, their wealth, their jewelry, everything like that.

50:01Can you kind of talk about the problem that could come up with, you know, staff that weren't very trustworthy and the crimes that could come off that? Yeah, I mean, the servants were generally regarded as being dishonest. They weren't, a lot of them. But if ever there was a theft, you blame the butler. And there are lots of cases as well of the butler did it, or a footman stealing, or a housekeeper leaving a window open so that a burglar can come in the night and take stuff. there is a tension there certainly between servant and master and mistress but um by and large i think you know they were i mean i made quite a lot of them in the book and that's partly because i think you know that there are there are some strange stories there about there's one about a footman who who he thought he was so clever he stole um his mistress's jewels and then he sent a letter down to his mother, a sealed letter down to his mother in London, asking his mother to send this letter back to the house, offering to give the jewels back for a certain, if a ransom was left.

51:10The trouble is he used the notepaper, he used the notepaper from his employer, and the ink that his employer had used on the notepaper. So the employer took one look at this and thought he did it, quite rightly so. And of course you get, you get all kinds of crime prevention devices you know you'll get bells on windows you'll get chains um chains on doors the advice was um if you have a dog have a small dog rather than a big one and um keep it keep it sort of tied up in the house so it barks but doesn't actually attack an intruder one of the reasons for keeping it tied up was that burglars were known to put poisoned meat through a letter box so the dog could eat it and then pass out.

51:56So it was safe to get in there. Sure. So because I think at the peak, you talk about the staff or maybe it was 1901. You said there were 1.3 million staff working in country houses. So this was a massive industry in the sense of, you know, population that were that were doing some sort of role in those houses. So, I mean, even if you had, you know, let's just say you had, I don't know, 5 ,000 events that were crimes relative to the people that are working in these houses. That's a pretty good success rate that the wealthy are dealing with. Let me take it one step because I also, the other relationship is, I mean, you talk about the houses that burn down.

52:38I think you talked about like gas explosions or electricity, you know, problems before we had fuses being a common issue. and I think the one I remember the most was Ragley Hall where the owner had a list of rules to do and it was like, you know, stay calm first off, don't be frightened and you use it in the book as a way of understanding kind of what the fire rules in that house were. Yeah, and I mean, some houses didn't bother but some houses like Ragley were really well prepared in that you're right, you had regular drills. some of the big houses have their own fire brigades you know that firemen drawn from estate workers and their own fire engines as well um meriwether and company kind of cornered the market in in small fire engines which were you know by today's standards they weren't very effective and also you needed to get a water supply it's an amazing number of houses i came across that burned down in a winter because the fire brigade got there and then couldn't break the ice on a nearby lake to get the hose in to put the fire out.

53:46But you, yeah, and it's, at one point, I was reckoning that at least one country house a week was either burning down or being badly damaged by fire. It was, you know, it was what worried people most. You know, in a world still lit mainly by fire, accidents happened. You know, the Duke of Portland's house, Welbeck Abbey, nearly burned down in 1900. And that was because a maid was ironing, was pressing one of the daughter's sashes for a party. She plugged the electric iron in. There was no current because current came and went. She went downstairs to do something else. The current came back on and the iron heated up and then burned the house down.

54:32The Duke of Portland said after that, he threw all the electric irons he could find in the lake because we're the safest place for them. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you're searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smead funds a look, or better yet, reach out at smeedcap.com.

55:08And don't forget to mention that you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smeed funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. the other thing that I really, cause I think, I think this is maybe one of the featured moments in the book and you could tell me if I'm wrong in that, but let's say I'm going to entertain for a weekend and I'm going to do that for the Royals.

55:49I think the Covendish family, their weekend entertainment was kind of a perfect picture of a noble, wealthy estate hosting folks. So could you kind of walk us through what that weekend looked like for the Covendish family? Yeah, I mean, it's a great honour and it's a massive chore at the same time because, you know, when the king and queen or the prince and princess in this case come to visit, you really want to give them a good time. but there are certain expectations you know as as they drive as they arrive at the station the railway station they're met by crowds cheering you know flags they're they're they're cheered all the way to their carriage they can't they're people line the streets it's a really big deal i mean and it's hard for us to imagine that in a in a much more kind of media savvy age that people to see the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales was a tremendously big thing and as they arrive at the house and the Dukes of Devonshire's house is Chatsworth we're still there still owned by the Dukes of Devonshire still lived in by the Dukes of Devonshire as they arrive at Chatsworth everything is laid on for them the shooting there's a ball for 400 of the local gentry and aristocracy 400 people i mean that's quite and a special trains are laid on to bring guests into the into the neighborhood um the the ball doesn't go that well because the trains are late and people don't get there till about 11 30 at night but it's all there's a firework display for the tenants in the park there's visits to neighboring country houses and the whole thing is choreographed all the time you've got the prince's um private detectives not private detectives they're they're scotland yard detectives but the security people keeping an eye on things uh um there's one great story i came across where for another visit to chatsworth royal visit the police found this foreign guy wandering into the house and they they sort of interrogated him said who are you you know this is just before the prince of wales arrives and he says i am i am de band and they think they they don't know how on earth it turns out he's a member of the band he was actually one of the musicians who was playing that night um and he wasn't an anarchist at all which is what everybody was worried about but yeah so you've got visits to local you know the prince and princess would receive loyal addresses from local people they would see school children i mean it was quite a tiring business being a a royal on a on a visit like that but they also got to you know to play cards there's a great little vignette of the princess of wales playing billiards um you know she loved she loved a kind of quiet game of billiards at night uh it's and once the prince and princess of wales have gone you know you heave a sigh of relief but if it's gone well that's great but you're a lot poorer for it i mean it would cost thousands and thousands of pounds to put something like that on but you didn't say no it was common that that hunting would hunting would be part of that weekend as you got later into the weekend too yeah usually shooting um rather i mean yeah shooting rather than fox hunting with with me I tend to think of hunting being fox hunting horses.

59:17But yes, shooting on the chast with estates was always, you know, was usually part of that kind of setup. And in fact, by the end of that, by the end of the 19th century, you know, you've got some of the big shooting estates. That's what they're for. You know, that's why they're bought. Edward, Prince of Wales, Edward VII, as he becomes his estate at Sandringham, is primarily a shooting estate. Elverdon, where Dulip Singh lived, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Elverdon is a shooting estate. And he sells it to Edward Guinness, Lord Ivy. And Ivy buys it because he wants a shooting estate. And land is preserved.

59:59Game is preserved on it. It's not there to provide pasture. It's not there to provide, you know, to grow wheat or anything like that, to graze cattle. It's there to provide cover for the pheasants and the grass. That's what it's for. You know, over thousands of acres. When the shooting, it seems like the other debate that would go on among these people is what makes you a greater shooter, how good you are at shooting or how many pheasants you took down. because it seemed like part of the, I'll call it the, you know, the fish's tail was really, you know, what were your numbers, not how good of a shot you are.

1:00:42Yeah, yeah. And people complained about this even at the time, that all, you know, the really kind of convinced, almost professional shooters, all they cared about was their score, if you like. And that wasn't quite the thing. It wasn't quite what decent gentlemen did. but you're right I mean the extent of the slaughter was terrifying I went at Hall Barn in what 1913 I think George V who was loved shooting George V there's a story about when he he got a telegram from his wife um from uh um from Queen Alexandra sorry no from Queen Mary saying that her mother had just died and would he come back to London?

1:01:33And his response, he was heard as he came back in the car from the shooting estate. He was saying, well, that's not my shooting on the head now, hasn't it? He was really hacked off because he had to stop shooting. But yes, he and the Prince of Wales. Was he also the one that he skipped a wedding to stay out shooting? That's right. Yeah, he skipped a show. One of the rules, he just all out said, I'm not going to be there. Yeah, I'm busy, basically. That's quite right. But he and his son, another Prince of Wales, who would become Edward VIII, Wallace Simpson Edward VIII, but he and his son at Hall Barn in 1913, I mean, they, on a single day, I can never remember the figures.

1:02:12It's something like 3 ,000 birds they shot. I mean, the King, George V, said to his son afterwards, I think we might have overdone it today. And, you know, it wasn't sport, it was slaughter. I would have never thought that they, I mean, those pheasants weren't there naturally. They had to, in many cases, procure them, feed them, treat them. And effectively, it was there like stalking a lake. I mean, they had to stalk the fields with pheasants just to be hunted. Absolutely right. That's exactly what it was. They were brought, birds were brought in. I mean, at Hall Barn, they were set at the time that there were so many shots that they were convinced that the owners had actually, you know, had brought in thousands of birds because they couldn't have, you know, the estate couldn't have sustained them all.

1:02:55Yeah. And again, not quite the thing. Yeah. So there's a lot that we didn't cover, Adrian. We didn't touch on the effect of automobile on the weekend parties. You know, I'm looking here else. We didn't talk about the infidelity, which if you want a little bit of fun and sexuality, you can find out, you know, there's pages of it in your book. There's a lot of fun. I mean, there's the eccentricities to all these characters are just one of the real treasures and make your book such a fun read. But I just want to throw it back to you, Adrian, and ask if there's a story that we haven't talked about or something of the book that you really think is special to you, what would that be for our listeners?

1:03:39I mean, we've covered the two big things for me when I was doing the book. One were the incomers, the Rothschilds and the Isaac Singers and the Duleep Sings and the important role they played. And indeed, you know, even people that didn't, people who were native Britishers, if you like, but not part of that social milieu. I mean, I was fascinated. One of my favourite characters is Belle Bilson. Belle married the Earl of Clancarty. He was via Count Dunlough. He became the Earl of Clancarty. And she was a musical. You know, she was a burlesque actress. and she shouldn't have been accepted in landed society at all.

1:04:22In fact, she was. You know, she became a countess. She did all the things that countesses did. She hosted charity things. She presided over dinners. She distributed arms to the poor. She did everything they should do. And yet this is an actress. The other thing that, and again, we have covered it, I think, The other thing that intrigued me was the impact of new technology. Like you say, the motor cars, the electricity, the gas lamps, the steam laundries. You know, the Duke of Hamilton installed a steam laundry at his lodge in Scotland. And the reason for that steam laundry, I was amazed, was that it speeded up things because every week that laundry had to wash 1 ,800 pieces of linen.

1:05:11That's an awful lot of laundry for a country house and not even a big country house. and I guess the the you know yeah one of the things that we struggle with a bit is hindsight that you know you look at that summer of 1914 and we know what was coming we know what was coming we know that a lot of the people attending those garden parties it was a lovely summer 1914 and a lot of the people there a lot of the men there would soon be dead in Flanders you know they would they would they wouldn't come back but of course they didn't know that as far as they were concerned. It was just, you know, it was just another happy summer.

1:05:45And looking back, that gives an added poignancy to it, I think, to the loss, the sense of loss and the sense of change, something big was happening. Yeah. It reminds me of watching Gone with the Wind, where everyone's excited for war, knowing that, you know, in hindsight, no one should have been excited for the civil war here in the United States either. Adrian, where can people follow you going forward? Are you know, I see you have a website out there. Do you, are you active in social media? I am. I'm, I'm a Tinniswood, A-D-E Tinniswood on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I haven't quite got around to TikTok yet, but that's because I don't do the dances, you know?

1:06:26Yeah. But yeah, but Facebook, if people want to follow me, if people want to follow me on, on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. They're very welcome. Well, it's been really fun, Adrian. I will say, for our listeners, I will say that the part of the book that I think you really will have fun with, like I did, is learning about Earl Russell and how you can go from being part of nobility in England all the way out to getting a divorce and a marriage in Reno, Nevada. So I'll leave that little breadcrumb out there for our listeners. Our podcast listeners should go out and buy a copy of The Power and the Glory to understand how wealthy or aristocats of another gilded era dealt with their weekends, vacations, and social events.

1:07:13It also reminds me that money can change wealth, but time doesn't change what the wealthy do and the problems they try to fix. If you enjoyed this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs. Give us a review. Tell others about the books and the great authors like Adrian that we get to have the opportunity to understand and share the world with and through. For our tribe, if you have a book that you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book With Legs podcast.

1:07:50We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products at SmeadCap.com or by calling your financial advisor.

1:08:23Thank you.