NBB Design were asked to create a space that was warm and colourful, showing artistic expression and creativity without looking over-styled or designed. Each showed a single woman seated on a simple chair and leaning against the mantelpiece around a fireplace. Whether you want a sleek and contemporary mantel design or a delicately detailed Victorian surround, Chesneys handcraft a selection of fire surrounds to complement the interior of your home.

Here, you will find a stunning collection of wooden mantelpieces that add a touch of natural beauty and timeless elegance to your fireplace. The essay describing her hallucinations, while in the hospital with complications from surgery due to a misdiagnosed chronic issue, is memorable. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The most famous essay in this collection of pieces that Mantel wrote from the London Review of Books is Mantel’s “Royal Bodies”. the pieces I liked best, though, were the pieces that stray slightly away from the scholarly path to deal in the stuff of life: the similarly titled "Meeting my Stepfather" and "Meeting the Devil" (not actually about the occult, but about Mantel's lucidly addled experience of illness - at one point she quite delightfully refers to the images she sees as "hallies"; they have, clearly, become a friend).

So if you did relish the masterworks, you'll get a satisfying top-up here, with additional coverage of Tudors and Jacobins and other characters of less prominence but much interest.

The prose is as good as Mantel's always is, and, while some readers will no doubt find her topics dry, I think most people who read and enjoy the likes of Wolf Hall will probably find this engaging, too. A modern fireplace usually serves as an element to enhance the grandeur of an interior space rather than as a heat source.

I rather admire Hilary the most when she is being deliciously mean as well as rigorously intellectual. I heard about this book from Rosamunde_Reads on Instagram and as someone who generally enjoys English history, I thought I would enjoy this book! Consider height when curating your mantelscape, stack books to elevate smaller trinkets, so they don’t get lost amongst taller accessories.

The English chimneypieces of the early seventeenth century, when the purer Italian style was introduced by Inigo Jones, were extremely simple in design, sometimes consisting only of the ordinary mantel piece, with classic architraves and shelf, the upper part of the chimney breast being paneled like the rest of the room. While most essays are book reviews (a few were more personal), they were such a joy to read because of Mantel's piercing insight into the subjects under review and for her beautiful sentences and turns of phrase, often unexpected and not seldom with aphoristic quality.Towards the close of the eighteenth century the designs of the Adam Brothers superseded all others, and a century later they came again into fashion.

Maybe it's just the mayhem of being a bookseller at Christmas that meant I couldn't quite wrap my head around all the detail she likes to throw onto the page and package in beautifully constructed metaphors and allegories. I'm not sure this would be for everyone, but if you want to see a good long form review, and understand all the work that must go into producing one (not only reading the book being reviewed, but also widely in the surrounding domain) it is worth it. Many of these articles revolve around the French Revolution and the Tudors, which were the focus of some of Mantel's own novels.Reproduction Campagnarde Style Stone Fireplace, Reclaimed, French Chateau, Farmhouse, Rustic, Distressed Finish, Mantel !