Parallel Lives

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An affectionate look at two very different lives lived in tandem but intertwined by country house life on the Ards Peninsula in County Down. Castle Ward (now held by The National Trust) and Ballywhite House stood on opposite sides of Strangford Lough but their owners and those who lived on the estates found that their idyllic lives were changed for ever by the advent of the Second World War. This remarkable biography of Colonel William Brownlow, The Major', and Agnes White chronicles two very different lives. One was well known in Northern Ireland society, becoming Lord Lieutenant for County Down - a World War II veteran who campaigned for local issues and championed horse-racing and country sports. The other life was lived more quietly behind the scenes as a working mother and wife, chorister and talented amateur artist, but both were the faces of working lives well spent. All the more fascinating for being true...