French Chateau Living: The Château du Lude

very well balanced book with the right amount of photos of the architecture, the interiors and the past of the castle. Very well written too.

Fantastic book...you'll feel like you lived in a magnificent French chateau when you finish this amazing book...photos are incredible...thanks

Great book

i bought this book because i am interested in the architecture of French chateaux. This book has some excellent photographs of the exterior, but about 70% of the photos of the interiors are closeup shots of different objects - objects that that could be anywhere, and don't particularly lend any context to this chateau. Very few rooms are shown in their entirety; a few are shown either at weird angles, or only a fraction of some are shown of some, maddeningly enough. For example, the library, which is an amazing room, only a corner is shown that hints at the room's magnificence; then a narrow glimpse through a door at some bookcases; then a whole page devoted to a closeup of three shelves holding books - a shot that could be anywhere! This is all you see of what I can only imagine - thanks to this unreasonably limiting style of photography - to be an architecturally significant room. My overall judgment of this book is that it is disappointing, because it fails to give a full accounting of the house's interior. We must wait, it seems, for the seminal book about the Chateau du Lude to be written.

I was very disappointed in the book. I had expected more pictures of the period's furniture and china used at that time. It is also a very heavy book, so not easily handled.

This book was bought as a Christmas present for my wife, but we have both enjoyed it.This superb book is a perfect balance of gloriously rich photography and informative text, outlining the history of a middle-ranking French Chateau in the Pays de la Loire, and giving fascinating detail of how the house has lived, functioned and adapted through cataclysmic social changes up to the present day.Despite the apparent 'coffee table' format (it may need to be quite a strong table!), this is a book for any lover of architecture and decor, for the social historian, and for any who love North West France.

Its everything that the write up said it would be.A beautiful book with wonderful pictures and a marvellous story on the chateau itself.Well bound book with no marks and in mint condition

Bought for my wife as she is a fan of the 'Chateau' programs on TV, she loved the book which is a quality publication.

must have coffee table book.fine illustrated book .great photographs pictures.

Love this book