“Blenheim: Biography of a Palace”, by Marian Fowler

272 pages, Penguin Books Ltd., ISBN-13: 978-0140106176

Blenheim: Biography of a Palace by Marian Fowler is a small but wonderful book, a popular history (or, I guess I should say, biography) of perhaps the greatest of all English country houses, from its conception and building in the opening decade of the 18th Century to the burial of Winston Churchill in the early 1960s. Using the vast Blenheim papers (now in the British Museum), together with local Oxfordshire documents and archives, Fowler has been able to trace the history not just of its famous inhabitants but, perhaps just as importantly, of the building itself. along with the thousands of servants and workmen who have kept the place functioning over the years.

The book itself is divided into four long core chapters that each taking a specific event at Blenheim (the first is a theatrical performance of a Dryden play put on by his grandchildren for the almost senile first Duke of Marlborough) before moving on from there to a general description of the place and its inhabitants at that time. The four events are each separated by about 60 years and feature the reigning Duke as its guide. Fowler comprehensively details the often scandalous behavior of the spectacular landmark's occupants, as well as its physical features and crippling maintenance costs.

This is, in short, not only an informative, but an entertaining book, one which I have read several times over the years. Throughout it all, Fowler was able to capture the age in which the palace passed through the lives of a series of dukes who were, suffice to say, an interesting collection of persons. The point of the book was never an examination of the Blenheim Papers, nor, indeed, of the Churchill family, except when the book used those members to piggy-back the story of the palace. Just waht history should be: informative, entertaining and enlightening.