'Dr. Broadbent's magisterial and magnificent book is an architectural history of the houses of New South Wales in its first half century... It is an extraordinary story, absorbingly told. Dr. Broadbent draws on a profound knowledge of the rich documentary evidence, from the colonists' letters home to the first topographical drawings and photographs' (Michael Hall, Country Life). The Australian Colonial House is the definitive study of early Australian houses and society during the first fifty years of settlement. Through the villas, cottages, bungalows and mansions examined in the book, an insight is given into the early society of New South Wales. Dr Broadbent describes the houses and their builders from the colony's foundation in the late-eighteenth century to the disastrous depression of the 1840s. Broadbent analyses the origins of the most interesting houses in New South Wales and he brings history to life by populating his narrative with a variety of characters. These early houses are read as manuscripts, revealing the motives, and the follies of their builders, from Governor Macquarie's deliberate flouting of the Secretary of State's instruction in order to satisfy his and his wife's architectural ambitions, to the vainglorious attempts of Sir Thomas Mitchell, with a new knighthood, seeking to recreate Old England in the Antipodean Bush. Published in association with the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.