The inside story

This posthumous book is the summation of a lifetime’s research into aspects of the 18th-century interior in the British Isles by the leading historian of the subject. I say British Isles, for John Cornforth had strong interests in Irish and Scottish Georgian architecture, as well as English. As the former architectural editor of Country Life and co-author, with the decorator John Fowler, of English Decoration in the Eighteenth Century (1974), he had already aired some of the themes developed here, and many of the subjects have appeared in articles in Country Life.

It is useful, however, to have them all melded together into a seamless celebration of the golden age of Georgian architectural decoration. The book is magnificently illustrated with specially commissioned colour shots as well as carefully researched archive photographs and views. The illustrations are a very important part of this book and form well-integrated support to the overall theses.