Downton Shabby: One American's Ultimate DIY Adventure Restoring His Family's English Castle

HGTV meets Downton Abbey! A ready-for-TV story—with charm and humor in abundance—about a Los Angeles producer who moves to England to save his ancestral castle from ruin."A true delight...In this marvelous debut, film producer DePree leaves the Hollywood hills to resurrect his British ancestral home, a 50,000-square-foot estate in the English countryside.

Readers are in for a treat."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)Hollywood producer Hopwood DePree had been told as a boy that an ancestor—who he was named for—had left his family’s English castle in the 1700s to come to America.

One night after some wine and a visit to Ancestry.com, Hopwood discovered a photograph of a magnificent English estate with a familiar name: Hopwood Hall, a 60-room, 600-year-old grand manor on 5,000 acres.

And with that, Hopwood DePree’s life took an almost fairytale turn.