Inspiration

If Monday mornings are inclined to get you down, may I recommend your morning cup of coffee is accompanied by a 1968 copy of Vogue’s Book of Houses, Gardens, People, photographed by Horst?

The sharp eyed amongst you will realise that we sell the successor, Hamish Bowles’s Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People… but I am afraid I am even more fascinated by the hard-to-come-by original (check out Abe Books if you have just had a bonus and feel like spending £500 on a book).

I include a few images. I promise that they will all, in their way, be etched on your memory for a long time to come.  Who could not want to be Mr and Mrs Carter Burden, Jr, or want to dine with Lord and Lady Elliot at Port Elliot (with their crazy blue eyes), or walk through Nancy Lancaster’s green topiary garden at Haseley, or step across the roof tops of Florence with the Puccis, or sink in to Baron and Baroness Philippe de Rothschild’s perfect, long blue sofas, or go driving around Rome with Cy Twombly (or play soldiers with the children), or visit the Duke of Windsor with his perfect suit*, white flowers, and red box entitled ‘The King’?

*the caption reads: The Duke’s suit is of blue Scotch tweed with a big white check. (Although he has his coats made in London, his suits are completed in New York, where he believes that trousers are cut better.)

Well, exactly. Are you feeling better now? You are.  I will try to devote a whole piece to the Desmond Guinnesses at Leixlip in due course. Then, if you are anything like me, you will probably find yourself some way closer to heaven. Watch this space.