If you don't know your ogees from your gables, your Ionic from your Doric, or your English Bond from your Flemish Bond, this chocolate-box miscellany of architecture in Britain will put you right. In roughly historical fashion, the author explains the features of Norman castles, Tudor cottages, all kinds of churches, stuccoed terraces, country piles, sash windows and so forth. His motivation is admirably polemical: lots of Brits travel to Italy, for example, and marvel at the architecture there, without caring enough about what is on their own doorstep. To that end, Mount also provides enthusiastic sightseeing guides to specific walks, and train and motorway journeys. As the title forewarns, the book is written in a peculiarly English register of implacable jocularity, which may not be to all readers' tastes. The style is faintly imitation-Wodehouseian, and skittishly meandering - Mount repeatedly has to interrupt his own reveries with an abrupt "Back to chancels" or the like - and yet the reader learns some delightful things. Mount expresses charmingly the hope that reading it may be "like being shown round Edwardian public baths in Harrogate by Alan Bennett", and if you find that prospect enchanting, you will not be disappointed.