The highlight of my trip to Paris was always going to be a visit to Chantilly. I had visited Versailles, Fontainbleau, Giverny and so on before but never Chantilly. From the aerial photographs it looked breath-taking but that always worries … Continue reading
Put together an enlightened client, a great architect and a famous artist and something wonderful might happen……….. However, my first impressions of the Fondation Maeght were not favourable; unfriendly ticket office staff, high admission charge (justifiable in view of it … Continue reading
In the last week or so, it has dawned on me that if there is such a thing as a garden visiting nerd, I have become one. I keep catching myself saying ‘when I visited this garden 20 years ago’ … Continue reading
Paris has its many grands projects, and although Parc Andre Citroen may be one of the lesser ones, 20 years after its creation it has become a discarded trinket. An international competition, a critically acclaimed brilliant design opening to a … Continue reading
I doubt that the IXXth is a great arrondisement in which to live, but if I ever moved to Paris I would want Parc des Buttes Chaumont to be my neighbourhood park. It is curious, wacky and sublimely picturesque. … Continue reading
It’s one thing to have a brilliant idea, quite another to make it happen. I spend a lot a lot of time thinking, much of it of the ‘what if’ variety but one of my many failings is that most … Continue reading
Lawrence Johnston is famed for creating his great and influential garden at Hidcote, but I have always been curious to visit his other garden in the hills just outside Menton on the Cote d’Azur. How does it compare to Hidcote, … Continue reading
Beside the Grotto at Vaux le Vicomte can be found a pair of allegorical stone statues of a lion protecting a squirrel. The lion was meant to represent Louis XIV, the tiny squirrel Nicolas Fouquet (whose name in … Continue reading
How can a garden be so famous yet so little understood, be so vulgar and so magnificent at the same time, and be a symbol of overwhelming power yet so ravishingly intimate? Versailles somehow manages to be all of these … Continue reading
It’s a strange sensation when you study the face of someone who’s fallen asleep. You sense that although they are physically with you, they are not really there. It reminds me of when I was a small child lifting my … Continue reading
I cannot help but feel a certain sympathy for the French royal family. After Louis XIV created the absolute monarchy and centralised all the power at Versailles the pressures of state resting on the shoulders of one man, the king, … Continue reading
In Jacque Tati’s hilarious film ‘Playtime’, Monsieur Hulot, the buffoon hero parodies the house as a machine for living. The owners of a gadget-ridden house are baffled by its technology, which M. Hulot manages to cause to malfunction, all to … Continue reading