The Houses of Guinness

An entertaining new history of the Guinness family and their homes, told by our leading historian of the country house.

In late 2025, the new Netflix epic ‘House of Guinness’, a saga of one of Europe’s most enduring dynasties, will sweep into households around the world. 

In The Houses of Guinness, bestselling author Adrian Tinniswood explores the histories of the legendary Guinness family – brewers, philanthropists, socialites – through their mansions and town houses. His tour opens the door to Irish palaces like Farmleigh (where the Edwardian ballroom is said to have a floor made from barrels brought from the brewery) and Luggala in the Wicklow Mountains, and to Biddesden, an exquisite William-and-Mary country house bought as a home for Bryan Guinness and his first wife Diana Mitford, and Robert Adam’s Kenwood on Hampstead Heath, which Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh saved from destruction and bequeathed to the British nation.

Unravelling the stories of more than a dozen great Guinness houses, Tinniswood reveals what life was like for a dynasty that rose from ordinary beginnings in Georgian Dublin to become one of the most powerful families in the British Isles. This engaging history is abundantly illustrated with a selection of new and archival photographs and paintings.

''Tinniswood … [is] an erudite historian of country-house life in all its anecdote-worthy vagaries'' Financial Times

''We are in the company of a confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly …'' Virginia Nicholson, The Times