Houses reveal something of the character of their inhabitants. Maybe they even help shape that character? Lives of Houses is a collection of essays on the dwellings of famous people, many of them located in the British Isles with outliers including Sibelius’ log cabin in the Finnish forest and Louisa May Alcott’s Massachusetts home. Some essays amount to pocket-size biographies, such as historian David Cannadine’s piece on “Winston Churchill’s Dream House.” More revealingly, Oxford English professor Laura Marcus draws a line from the country house where H.G. Wells grew up, with its underground servants passages, and The Time Machine’s subterranean world. W.H. Auden appears twice, first for his cluttered apartment on New York’s St. Mark’s Place and then at his final home in an Austrian village. The move coincided with changes in the themes of his poetry. Lives of Houses is a delight for bibliophiles.
