‘An amazing account of the reconciliation of history and continuity in two very distinct, almost contradictory arenas.’ Antony Gormley

David Lascelles embarks on a journey to reconcile a lifelong interest in Buddhism with his family’s controversial inheritance.

• An extraordinary story about a meeting of cultures interspersed with accounts of travels in the Himalayas, including the turbulent history and beliefs that have shaped the region.

• The author is a prominent voice raising awareness of Britain’s historic role in the slave trade, speaking regularly on the subject in the media.

In the spring of 2004, David Lascelles invited a group of monks from Bhutan to build a stupa in the 1000- acre Capability Brown designed gardens of Harewood House in Yorkshire. It was a step into the unknown for the Bhutanese. They didn’t speak any English, had never travelled outside their own culture, had never flown in an airplane or seen the ocean.

Theirs was one kind of journey, but the project was also another kind of voyage for David. It was an attempt to reconcile a deep interest in Buddhism with the 250 years that his family has lived at Harewood, the country house and estate – with its links to one of the darkest chapters in Britain’s colonial past – that he has loved, rejected, tried to make sense of and been haunted by all his life.

In Buddhist thought, one of the functions of a stupa is to harmonise the environment in which it is built and subdue the chaotic forces at work there. Would this stupa have a similar effect, quelling the forces of Harewood’s past and harmonising the contradictions of its present?

About the Author:

David Lascelles is a film producer of both documentaries and drama for television and cinema. Several of his films have been nominated for awards, including Inspector Morse, Wide-Eyed and Legless and Richard III. He lives at Harewood in Yorkshire, which has been his family’s home since the eighteenth century, and for many years has chaired Harewood House Trust, the educational charitable trust that looks after the house, gardens and trust for the public benefit. On the death of his father in 2011, he became the 8th Earl of Harewood. A Hare-Marked Moon is his first book.

Hardback.