Scotland's lost houses - Ian Gow

Aurum's book on England's Lost Houses, published in association with Country Life, was an exceptional success, going into several reprints, generating a wealth of publicity, and tapping into the enormous nostalgia and mystique that surrounds the stately homes and country houses that have vanished for ever, for reasons of fire, dry rot, subsidence or simply demolition by an earlier, less conservation-minded age. For these often spectacular houses, the photographs in the book are the only record that they ever existed. Now Aurum publishes a companion volume on the lost houses of Scotland. One, Mavisbank, will be known to BBC viewers from the first series of the hugely successful Restoration. Other featured houses include Douglas Castle, Gordon Castle, Guisachan, Dunglass and Millearne among many others. The lavish photographic content derives primarily from the matchless archive of the National Monuments Record in Edinburgh, but will also draw on Country Life's photographs, local archives, and even the remarkable albums taken by a Perthshire demolition contractor in the fifties as he sought to memorialise his handiwork in dynamiting country houses.