'Elements of Architecture' by Rob Krier

     Since my trip to London and Cambridge I've been in a bit of a PoMo mood. So a fortnight or so ago I treated myself to this book, 'Elements of Architecture' by Rob Krier, Leon Krier's older brother.  I remember seeing other books by Rob Krier back in the 80s and really I should have bought them at the time, but to my regret I didn't.

     'Elements of Architecture' was first published in 1982, by Academy Editions, and edited by Dr Andreas Papadakis.  I have the 1992 edition.  It quickly established itself as an important text of architectural Post-Modernism, along with 'Learning from Las Vegas' (1972) by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Stephen Izenour, and Charles Jenck's 'The Language of Post-Modern Architecture' (1977), becoming a set text in many schools of architecture.  Whereas the other two books are largely are theoretical, 'Elements of Architecture' stands in the tradition of books produced by, say, the likes of James Gibbs and Batty Langley in 18th century England, that engage on both a theoretical and practical level with the reader.  They are meant to be a sourcebook of ideas for the designer, and they are essentially pattern books.  And in that Krier's book is no different.  There is however in contrast to, for example, Gibbs's 'Book of Architecture' Krier presents the reader with a series of ideal, slightly Platonic, types - facades, spaces, plans, stairs, etc.  An attempt, perhaps, to establish new typologies of building.  One is therefore tempted to believe that the work Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760-1834), the French architect and theorist, is a more pertinent comparison here.  For instance, the 'Rudimenta Opera Magnis et Disciplinae' c. 1790, which seems to have least some influence on Krier's graphic presentation and his vigorous drawing style - which is all together engaging.  In fact, one of the delights of this book are the large colour reproductions of Krier's drawings at the beginning.

     But whither Post-Modernism? It was, I suppose, a short efflorescence - lasting - what? - some twenty years or so. In some respects though its presence has remained, and in recent years there has even been a revival of sorts.  In Britain, for example, we have the 'Blue House' by FAT, the 'House for Essex' by FAT and Grayson Perry, the 'Red House, by David Kohn, and the work of Camille Walala, and Adam Nathaniel Furman.  Most of this is toward the playful end of Post-Modernism. In Italy there is the austere work of Paolo Zermani, with its echoes of Robert Venturi, Aldo Rossi and the whole Rationalist and Neo-Rationalist schools, and the Scuola Metafisica.
     Sadly, however, I feel this book's lesson will have to learnt all over again by the professionals.  Really, the architectural profession are like the Bourbons: 'They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing'.*

Further reading

'Elements of Architecture', Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1982 &1992

'Rob Krier on Architecture', Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1982

'Architectural Composition' Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1988

'Rob Krier: Architecture and Urban Design' (Architectural Monographs No 30), Academy Editions, 1993

'Urban Space, with examples from the city of Stuttgart' Rob Krier, Academy Editions, 1975

*Usually accredited (and wrongly?) to Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord.  Napoleon called Talleyrand 'that turd in a silk stocking'.

I'm ready for my close-up now Mr DeMille.

    

     The last time I visited Brighton I stayed the weekend with my friend Richard.  He lived in Brunswick Place in a top floor flat. Unhappily, the weekend did not go well.  However on Sunday we walked into the centre of Brighton the back way, along Landsdown Rd etc., avoiding the vile Western Avenue.  At the far end we paused for me to take some pictures of the somewhat eccentric Gothick Wykeham Terrace - all grey and white stucco and pinnacles - when a first floor window opened and voiced called out 'I'm ready for close-up now, Mr DeMille.'  He, Michael, then invited us in, at one point leaving us - two strangers - alone in his sitting room while he went downstairs to the kitchen.  The sitting-room was 'pure' Late Sixties/Early Seventies - white painted Gothic book shelves and a lime green carpet.  It was all rather stylish.  He returned some minutes later with some headed note paper and an invitation to tea sometime.  I remember him announcing that at one time he 'had Roy Strong on one side of me and Flora Robson and her sisters on the other.'  Or words to that effect.

     Sadly I never returned for tea, and never saw Michael or Richard again.  I wish I had, particularly Michael as he was a hoot and I was keen to record his house, but that weekend spelt the end of my friendship with Richard.  We last spoke at the beginning of lockdown, but alas, I think Richard must of died during those grim months.  

     This has turned out to be a less than cheerful introduction to a post about a couple of books by Sir Roy Strong, or as they used to call him in Private Eye, Dr Strange, than intended. However it is just about the only anecdote I have about the man, so it will have to do.

     Roy Strong is a bit of National Treasure.  Quite the Renaissance man: scholar, curator, writer (Author of some 43 (!) books, some in collaboration with his late wife, the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman), garden designer and maker, aesthete, dandy and habitue of the Beau Monde.  And I must say I'm a fan.  His first volume of published diaries 'The Roy Strong Diaries 1967-1987' is quite one of my favourite books and along with 'A Chequered Past' by Peter Schlesinger opens a window on the fascinating, now long vanished, interlocking worlds of Bohemia and the Beau Monde in Late Sixties/Early Seventies London.  A world essentially ended by the Oil Crisis of 1973.
    Therefore imagine my excitement when the bf announces he's found a cache of Strong's books for sale at Aberglasney.  After some toing and froing I ended up with these five books.  The books that interest me most are the autobiographical 'Roy Strong: Self portrait as a young man', 2013, and the 'The Renaissance Garden in England' 0f 1978 & 1998. (This is the paperback 1998 edition)

     'Roy Strong: Self Portrait as a Young Man' fleshes out part of that period covered in 'The Roy String Diaries'.  It is fascinating, partly because my own background shares some similarities with his - lower middle class and living in a 'semi', though I didn't actually live in suburbia, but (as I've said before) in a small market town in Lincolnshire.  I suspect that our tastes, and attitudes, are pretty much the same: 'a committed Royalist; an Oxford Movement Christian; a lover of Old England, its great houses, churches and landscape; in short, at this stage of my life, a prototype of the later Young Fogeys, conservative by instinct and not at all an Angry Young Man of the Colin Wilson/John Osbourne variety.'  (All that said, I suspect that Osbourne was probably more culturally conservative than assumed at the time.)
   At times this book reads like an Evelyn Waugh novel with our hero ascending the 'greasy pole' from Winchmore Hill in Enfield to Keeper of the National Portrait gallery at 32 and eventually Director of the V&A at 38.  If I remember rightly from the Diaries enjoying some very long lunches in the process and all the while encountering a whole flight personalities and eccentrics in the process, often immensely talented and but tragically flawed: the critic and exhibition maestro Dickie Buckle, and the artist Astrid Zydower spring to mind.  There is wonderful photograph - very 'Sixties' - of Buckle, Strong, and Buckle's assistant, Joe Predera.  They are standing amidst the chaos of the hang for the ground breaking Cecil Beaton exhibition of 1968.  Buckle looks like he's nicked his shirt from a production of Swan Lake, giving him the look a particularly robust but brassy barmaid. It seems to sum up a whole era.

    

     'The Renaissance Garden in England' is one of Strong's more academic works, a very 'Warburg Institute'* book, showing the influence of Strong's Phd tutor at the Warburg, Dame Frances Yates.  Yates (1899-1981) was another of those eccentric figures in Strong's life, a historian whose field of study was the Renaissance esoteric tradition; her published books such as 'Giordano Bruni and the Hermetic Tradition', and 'The Rosicrucian Enlightenment', reflect this.  Rather like the other books I have mentioned in this post it sheds light on a lost world, for very few of the gardens discussed in this book actually survive.  A world of great formal gardens full of symbolism and allegory, of grottos and mechanical wonders, places where the esoteric and the scientific were not yet estranged.
     Given that dearth of source materials ie gardens, Strong relies on written descriptions and contemporaneous paintings, drawings and prints.  Quite fascinating those prints in themselves.  Only one Hollar, but there are a small number taken from the wonderful 'Britannia Illustrata' of 1709.  In addition there is a liberal sprinkling of poetry of the period.  The result of all this is a rich, polymathic, satisfying bricolage of a book, the design of which appears to me, at least, to be heavily influenced by Mark Girouard's books such as 'Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan House' which were designed by Girouard's wife Dorothy.

*  The Warburg Institute is part of the University of London.  It was originally established in Hamburg in 1909.  In 1933, with the rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany, the Institute was relocated to London. 

Last year in reading....

    Happy New Year!   The return of something I last did way back in 2016. I cannot believe it was quite so long ago.  Anyway here is (as far as I can remember) my fiction reading from this last year.  Discoveries were: 'Dr Zhivago', 'The Jewel in the Crown', and 'The Secret Agent'.  'Heretics of Dune', by Frank Herbert was, like 'God Emperor of Dune', was a much more impressive piece of fiction than 'Dune'. Only one real disappointment: 'Heat Wave' by Penelope Lively.

'English Style'

      This book, 'English Style', is to be found nestling in the bibliography at the back of Ben Pentreath's wonderful first book 'English Decoration'.  Although keeping a lazy eye out for other books on the list, I always felt a certain reticence about buying this book.  I think I may have been put off by the images of the book on line, but I must say in the flesh this book is in many ways superb, a real delight.  The photography, by Ken Kirkwood is absolutely spot-on.  There are interiors by likes of David Hicks, Bernard Nevil, Charles Beresford Clarke, and Terence Conran. If I was feeling particularly cynical (which I often am these days) I might say the usual suspects.  Certainly if, like me you have a (small) library of this sort of book, then you can guarantee that certain people, and certain properties, such as The Temple at Stoke-By-Nayland, will reappear with pleasant regularity.  To leaven things there are, however, some new names to conjure with: Priscilla Conran, Piers Gough, Brian Henderson, Lesley Astaire, Tricia Guild, and Susan Collier (of Collier Campbell).  I could go on.  Anyway, in all there are some 58 entries or short chapters - short on text, but rich in photography.  In addition there is both a Forward by Terence Conran and a Preface by Fiona MacCarthy. Both are good, but the latter steals the prize. Although this is a book essentially about the English house, the net is cast wide enough to include a gypsy caravan and a narrow boat. (They are, it has to be remarked, the only working class interiors.) In addition there is even, perhaps oddly, one garden.  The result is an eclectic, seemingly encyclopedic book.  Regardless of any claim to the latter, it is certainly an embarrassment of riches, happily swinging between austerity of Minimalism and over abundant bricolage.  Minimalism apart this is essentially a conservative book, rather like Habitat (for all its vaunted Modernism).  As the Introduction points out the short efflorescence of the Sixties - in its wilder moments - had little lasting influence on English style.  There are no inflatable Italian furniture or Pop Art graphics on view here, and I see nothing necessarily wrong with that.  Not only is there an almost innate conservatism on display but also a certain seriousness, that I suspect could verge on the high minded.  An at times distant echo of 17th century Puritanism, perhaps.

     'English Style', not to be confused with that excellent book of the same name by Mary Gilliatt and Michael Boys*, was first published in the US by Clarkson N Potter Inc of New York, and then in Britain by Thames & Hudson in 1984.  It is the work of Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff, who was also the designer.  The former an American, the latter from Australia.

     Slesin, a grand step-daughter of Helena Rubinstein, is a prolific writer on matters of style and design: she worked at the New York Times as both writer and editor, and is currently design editor of Conde Nast House and Garden, and Editor-in-chief of Homestyle. Among her books is a biography of Helena Rubinstein: 'Over the Top: Helena Rubinstein: Extraordinary Style, Beauty, Art, Fashion and Design'.

     Cliff, as you may well remember from an earlier posts, was the designer of 'The House Book' of 1972 and the Creative Director of the Habitat catalogues in the 1970s.  At time of publication he was 'Creative Director' of the Conran Group, and was the 'Project Consultant' of 'Terence Conran's New House Book' New House Book' of 1985.  Slezin contributed the chapter 'One Room Living', Susan Collier 'A Sure Sense of Style'.  Stafford and Slesin subsequently worked together they worked on a number of books: 'French Style'. 'Greek Style', 'Indian Style', and 'Grimsby Style'.

     So far so good.

     However I have a number of reservations about this book, which in 1984 was subject to a scornful and dismissive review in the December edition of the 'World of Interiors', some less trivial than others.  Firstly the design.  On the whole it is very good.  I particularly like the use of a different textured paper for the 'supporting cast' - the introduction, the 'Catalogue of Sources', and the Index, etc.  There is a logic to it.  However the last two pages of the Introduction are in the same glossy paper as the 'main feature'.  A small point, I know, but some consistency would be preferable.  I suspect a technical explanation, which is fair enough.

     My main reservation however lies with the text of the Introduction and its ambition - and, indeed, the ambition of the whole book.  I realise that all books of this sort are subjective in their choices - the omitted (alas, no Angus McBean) are perhaps as telling as the included - but the authors go further than usual by attempting to cement Habitat and the whole Conran phenomenon in the mainstream of British art and design, as inheritors of the 'great tradition'. There are two problems with this; firstly the writers are too close (being part of the Conran cohort) to be completely objective; and secondly, and I think, shamefully, there is an attempt to do this by denigrating the opposition ie Laura Ashley.  A tame academic from the RCA is even brought in at this point like a hired assassin to wield the knife.  And that, to me at least, all seems a bit unnecessary.  

     Truth is, I suspect, that 'English Style' is in all but name a Conran production - at least a half a dozen of the interiors catalogued here are owned by people closely connected to TC, including the home, 'Old House, Informal Mix', of one of the photographers who worked on the 1985 Habitat catalogue - same furniture in the same positions in both publications etc.  

      The result then is not what you might call objective however it is a thing of beauty, and utility.  A very useful visual and historical reference to an eclectic, and interesting, period in British interior design.

     

* Little in the way of inflatable furniture etc. there either.

       

     

'Interwar: British Architecture 1919-39'

     

     In Alvilde Lees Milne & Derry Moore’s book 'An Englishman's Room' (1986) there is a photograph of the architectural historian Gavin Stamp standing in his study in St Chad’s Street, King's Cross.  It is the mid-eighties.  He is surrounded by the mounting piles of paper and books, paper littering the floor, the walls of the room stripped of the decorative accretions of the years down to the naked plaster, ready for re-decoration.  That re-decoration never happened.  The house, which he shared with his first wife, the journalist Alexandra Artley, and their two children, remained for years in the state of possibility but never becoming.  It is said that Artley's book 'Hoorah for the Filth-Packets' (1987) is based on their domestic arrangements.

     Gavin Stamp (1948-2017) was more than solely an architectural historian.  He was an author and journalist, conservationist, and polemicist.  Given to 'pronouncements'.  Most likely a bit of a contrarian too, with an ability to fall out with people.  But fascinating none the less.  He has been described as a ‘scholar activist’, but that has such a negative connotation these days I prefer not to use it; however, you get the idea.  GS was also a rather good amateur artist at the graphic design end of things.  It was during or just after his time at Cambridge that he designed the fascia and the menus for the legendary Cambridge eatery ‘Waffles Café’ on the corner of Gold St and Fitzroy St – all now gone, I’m afraid.  Judging by a single photo from his time at Cambridge he seems to have been a bit of a dandy.  He also designed rather precious posters in the style of Martin Travers for the spikily Anglo-Catholic St Mary, Bourne St, London.  In the capital he moved in the (equally fascinating) Bohemian circles that orbited the Art Workers Guild in Queen Square.  He got to know the likes of Osbert Lancaster and Sir John Betjeman. In a recent article in the ‘Oldie’ GS's parties, held in his flat in Pocock St, Southwark, were described as ‘rumbustious’.

     ‘Interwar’, which was left incomplete at the time of Stamp’s death, can been seen as a culmination, or perhaps a distillation, of a life’s work or if not that, then of that period which I have outlined above and which was, perhaps, the most productive and interesting.¹   For it was during that time in London GS worked on two exhibitions that would help start a critical re-assessment of the architecture of the interwar period.  In 1977, at the Heinz Gallery, Stamp curated a small exhibition, ‘Silent Cities: An Exhibition of the Memorial and Cemetery Architecture of The Great War’ exploring the architectural response to the horrors of the First World War.  He was on the organising committee for the landmark exhibition of 1981 ‘Lutyens: The Work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens 1869-1944’ at the Hayward Gallery.  In addition, in 1979 he was one of the founders of the ‘Thirties Society’, which was soon to become, and remain, the ‘Twentieth Century Society’.  In the mid-80s he campaigned successfully for the preservation of the Red Telephone boxes, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and synonymous now with the United Kingdom. 

     Make no mistake, for whatever the book’s faults and there several, this, even in its incomplete state, is an important work.  It is essentially the first overview of British architecture of the 1920s & 30s.  A period that has, Stamp would correctly argue, been neglected by architectural historians.  At best, possibly, seen as some sort of interregnum between the heyday of the Edwardian period and the post-war Modernist hegemony.  At worst, a sort of repository of the bad taste and the fleeting fashion; of Art Deco, Tudorbeathan, the Egyptian Revival, and Neo-Georgian – the architecture that really wasn’t worth discussing.  Well, not in polite company anyway. The strength of Stamp’s book is that it rightly discredits such views and also considers serious such non-U phenomena as the suburban semi², which like it or not, does warrant serious critical investigation.  Stamp shows the vitality of the period – that last (great) period of eclecticism, of what is often disparagingly called ‘Historicism’.  The period, (to give one example), in which Sir Edwin Lutyens produced some of his greatest work: the Cenotaph and related monuments to the Fallen of WWI, the imperial city of New Delhi, and the (unbuilt) Liverpool cathedral.  

     Yet, for as much as he deeply admired the work of Lutyens, it was those architects, such as Giles Gilbert Scott, Oliver Hill, and Harry Goodhart-Rendel, who happily moved between styles or attempted synthesis that, in this book at least, interested him the most.  And I think, just as much as his inability to decorate that house in St Chad’s St, it actually reveals quite a bit about the man.

 

 

1  In the late 80s GS left the London he loved and moved up to Glasgow to teach Art History at Glasgow School of Art.  And it is at that point, according to one obituary, that the graphic design essentially ceased.

2  Stamp was himself a child of the suburbs being raised in a ‘Tudor’ bungalow in SE London.

'Dr Zhivago'

    

   ‘Dr Zhivago' is a book I have been intending to read for years - inspired by David Lean's cinematic adaptation - but never got round to until this year.  It was the cover, I have to confess, of this Fontana Books edition of 1969 that I found in a second-hand bookshop that finally galvanised me into action.

     I really don't want to dwell here on Lean’s film of 1965.  It, after all, deserves a blogpost all to itself, but I will say that at times the film differs markedly from the book.  That is inevitable in any film adaptation and perhaps it's best to think of the film as a riff on Pasternak's novel.  I don't think those changes matter too much, however I have to register a disappointment that the book does not contain the line 'The personal life is dead in Russia.  History has killed it.'  It appears the screenwriter Robert Bolt has to be thanked for that.

      Like Shostakovich's 13th Symphony, 'Dr Zhivago' is a product of the so-called 'Khrushchev Thaw' - a time in the Soviet Union, post WWII, post Stalin, when there was a loosening of the state’s control of the arts (amongst other things).  Both the symphony and the novel challenged the limits of that 'thaw'.  The premiere of the symphony, December 18th 1962, took place against a background of intimidation by the authorities. Six years earlier when Boris Pasternak (1890-1970) had submitted the manuscript of Dr Zhivago to the literary journal 'Novy Mir' for publication it was rejected. It was just too critical of the Soviet regime. For a while it was circulated between Pasternak’s friends and then in 1957 it was smuggled out to the West, where its publication caused a sensation, and some literary critics were driven to hyperbole.  These two examples are taken from the back cover of the Fontana edition:

     ‘Doctor Zhivago will, I believe, come to stand as one of the great events in man’s literary and moral history.’   Edmund Wilson in The New Yorker

     ‘The first work of genius to come out of the Russia since the Revolution.’  V S Prichett in The New Statesman.

     With exception of the Epilogue, ‘Dr Zhivago’ is set during the first quarter of the 20^th century in Russia, opening when Yuri Zhivago is a child of 10 and concluding with his death at the age 0f approximately 35.  The majority of the novel is, however, concerned with the nine years of conflict between 1914, where Russia entered WWI, and the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922/23.  With Revolution of 1917 the external enemy is replaced with the internal, as Russia went to war with herself.  The Civil War that followed, alone, claimed between 5-7 million lives, mainly civilians.
     Against this almost apocalyptic historical process Zhivago attempts to find space to form a stable family life, first with Tonya and then Lara.  To insulate themselves from the titanic events grinding away like tectonic plates beneath them.  (The third attempt, which happens later in Moscow, is given a much briefer account.)  Their happiness is fleeting, and Yuri is defeated in each attempt. He loses everything each time and in that process of erosion is reduced to a husk of a man.  A man destroyed. The personal life was, indeed, dead in Russia.  Towards the end of the novel are two extraordinary passages when this broken man, still grasping at life, makes two epic journeys on foot through a decimated land, almost bereft of another living being.  Quite haunting, if not disturbing - one can almost feel as sense of evil abroad.  This is a strongly evocative book that seems to gather in strangeness as it progresses, and the everyday is shredded by conflict and the new authorities.  Though in the Realist tradition of the 19^th century, there is a deep sense of the 'other' particularly when we leave the city and venture out deep into the Russian countryside.
     I can’t help feel that the influence of Dostoevsky is close at hand – though as my knowledge of Russian literature is somewhat limited I may be wrong, but it seems to be there in the way the characters talk and interact and those philosophic discursions that pepper the book.  Tolstoy too in the vast scale and ambition.  Pasternak is attempting to convey the entirety of Russia – hence, I suppose the vast geographical and historical scope of the novel, one that suggests some sort of metaphysical intent.  Hence also the great number of named minor characters, which can be confusing.
     Much is made in the film adaptation of Yuri’s adulterous relationship with Larissa (Lara) Antipova, and the critic Stuart Hampshire reviewing the book in ‘Encounter’ called it ‘One of the most profound descriptions of Love in the whole range of modern literature.’ Yes, what unfolds is a love story.  And perhaps it is a strand of this novel that is most easy to pick up on in a novel that one critic rightly called 'elusive'. Dr Zhivago is, however, much more than that.  It is the story of a nation, a people, descending into madness and barbarism. Whole communities were wiped off the face of the earth. There were biblical scale plagues of vermin, and famine, and there were the 'Besprizorniki' (translated on wiki as 'The Unattended') - millions of abandoned children whose lives were lived on the streets, surviving by begging, stealing and prostitution.  It could be that some of those who were forced by circumstance into the latter were under the age of ten.¹  It is beyond comprehension.

1 They were the children of those killed in WWI, the Civil War, the famines and the purges.

'Laura Ashley decorates - A London House'

     This is a slim volume, a mere 88 pages, but does it pack a punch.  I have seen it before on ebay but took little interest. I have a copy of 'The Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating' and that really isn't up to much; whatever the merit of the text it is spoilt the by terrible photography.  However, last week I was trawling through Youtube and came across a short video by Isla Simpson on this book and I was deeply impressed by what I saw.

     In the early Eighties Laura Ashley Ltd bought and renovated a large terraced house in west London.  This book illustrates the results. (There is a section at the back of 'before and after' shots.) Though this is not all quite to my taste you really have to admire their ambition.  This is a bravura performance, an equal to anything being produced in the more posher end of the interior design business.  The text makes it plain - this is not merely a recreation of a mid-Victorian middle class interior.  There is, after all a modern kitchen in the basement.  Kitchen apart, however, this project really could only have been made in the Post-War period.  It shares the sort of aesthetics that were illustrated in Mary Gilliat's 'English Style' of 1967.   See here for my post on that wonderful book.  In parts there is even a residual 60s/70s bohemianism.  I've always thought that Laura Ashley falls more easily into the Post-war scene than popularly thought.  Modernism's hegemony may have rigidly enforced in the realm of architecture, but failed elsewhere.  Thankfully.
     This project does however mark a change in Laura Ashley's outlook towards the grander and the historically informed, less cottage.  The results here are stunning.

     The research and intelligent text are by art historian Jane Clifford and the excellent photography by Arabella Campbell-McNair-Wilson. 

Jocasta Innes: Living in Style

     Realising that the original illustrations were not of a high enough standard, this post has been updated, as of 18/04/2024, with a better, and wider, selection of images.

    Picked this book up the other day while exhibiting at Aberglasney - they possess a rather good second hand book corner and I've picked some lovely books in my time.  

     I had a copy of 'Living in Style', which I believe is her third book of interior design, many years ago and, for a reason I can't now remember, I got rid.  I have a suspicion that I also owned 'Paint Magic', published 1981, at the same time, but I may be mistaken.

    Jocasta Innes (1932-2013) was, as this book shows, a possibly unique combination of bohemianism and the practicality. The latter the child of the former, born out of necessity.  Creativity from chaos.  From 1979 she lived in Spitalfields, an area in the East End of London, that was then in process of being rediscovered.  There she restored a 18th century town house, honing her skills in the process, and which she relayed to us in her many books.  All the while continuing to work as a journalist and writer.  A force of nature of sorts.
     I have to admit a slight disappointment with the design of the book.  I suppose I expected something a bit more chic from a book connected with Cosmopolitan, even one sponsored by Dulux - Innes, I should add, was at the time Design Editor of the magazine.  Some of the images in this book reflect that cultural milieu of Spitalfields - hence the large picture of Dennis Severs (1948-2001) in his remarkable Folgate St house.  There is also an admix of Arty North London Bourgeoisie.  Though I have say I think some her contemporary choices don't quite hit the mark, the following do. (Oh, by the way for those who don't know, the gentleman resembling a deckchair is the inestimable George Melly - jazz singer, raconteur, writer and tv presenter. Bohemian. Habitué of the Colony Room.)