Inspiration

A friend emailed me this morning with a copy of the Sunday Telegraph’s ‘20 Best Interiors Blogs‘. It turns out I’m number 4 on the list, goodness, I thought, how exciting… before realising that they are alphabetically arranged (so I am glad that, unlike school, first names come first).

Nonetheless it occurred to me that perhaps there should therefore be a blog about interiors. Enough about my grey mood yesterday; enough about the European crisis. Perhaps we all need a bit of escapism right now?

For real interiors daydreaming, can I recommend my pen-friend Katy Elliott’s engrossing musings on restoring her 18th century Marblehead house; or, more escapist still, the brilliant ‘Peak of Chic‘ that still provides the real inspiration to the power that is Bridie?

In the meantime, do you recall a little while ago I wrote about Horst’s Book of Houses, Gardens, People? At the time, I promised to write one day about my favourite house of all in the book, Leixlip Castle in Ireland. I haven’t forgotten.  But I have finally got around to taking some photographs.  They really speak for themselves, as of course does Horst’s brilliant text: “It is the great house of Irish fiction, with grandoise ground-floor salons and high-ceilinged bedrooms, hunters and ponies grazing behind park railings rusty suits of armour in the stables, and geese ranging free over the lawn”. Are you transported yet?

But could we have a moment to delight in the wine-bottle dark walls, and pure white joinery, in the hall; in the brilliant clarity of the library, with its leather book-lined shelves, Irish mahogany furniture, and ticking upholstery (perfectly matching the Guinness-blue eyes); or in the vivid scarlet walls of the sitting room? We could. Perfect. I do not know more inspirational rooms.

Buy your copy here. Time to start saving.