Pick of the month

A speaker at this year’s Festival is one of seven authors included in Waterstones’ Books of the Month of May.

Historian and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank combines architecture and social history in The English House: A History in Eight Buildings with stories of the lives of their first occupants.

The book, one of two listed as a pick of the month’s best non-fiction reads, reveals the ways in which English homes have developed and changed over the past few centuries.

From an opulent residence in Chichester to a block of flats in London’s East End, Cruickshank’s entertaining and illuminating book intertwines social and architectural history to chart the development of the English house.

Waterstones describes his book as “a gloriously sweeping social history told through the lens of houses through time . . .”

Buy your copy today and make the most of Waterstones’ offer in advance of the Festival which runs from 16-24 October.