Tim Knox – författare

The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, 39-year-old Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, invites the reader into the house that his family has called home since the fifteenth century. In recent years, his award-winning restoration has brought the house back to life, transforming exquisite spaces that honour the past while being suited to twenty-first-century living. English country-house splendour, through the hands of some of the world s top artisans and craftspeople, returns to the house in the form of re-created wallpapers, customized paints, revived furniture from the Georgian and Victorian periods, reworked antique Brussels tapestries, restored plasterwork and textiles, and a complete overhaul of the landscape, with its sunken garden, woodlands, avenue of beeches, lake, and shell-encrusted grotto. With stories of noteworthy architecture, beautiful interiors, and centuries of a single family s involvement in British and world history, this book will appeal to devotees of country living, the aristocratic life, historic houses, and English interior design.

Every year, millions of art lovers visit The Royal Collection which consists of over a million objects including 7,000 paintings, 150,000 works on paper, and 30,000 watercolours and drawings. This stunning, erudite volume showcases in particular the collection s masterpiece paintings including works by Bellini, Mantegna, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Durer, Cranach, Holbein, Rubens, Rembrandt, van Dyke, Vermeer, Hogarth, Gainsborough, and many others. From still life paintings to landscapes to portraits, some of the world s finest paintings are reproduced in exacting detail. This remarkable volume traces the evolution of this unparalleled collection and reads like a veritable history of western art. Begun almost by accident, it was one of the last of the great European royal art collections to be formed, and one of the largest to have survived intact into the twenty-first century. Also included in this special survey is a smattering of treasures from its vast collection of drawings and watercolours. The Royal Collection is spread over 13 locations all historic royal residences. Members of the Royal Family reside in most of these, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham House, and Kensington Palace, while others the Queen s Gallery and Hampton Court Palace have become spaces devoted to the public display of art. The story of the Royal Collection is a visual record of the tastes and obsessions of Britain s kings and queens over the past 500 years, and this revealing insight into the history of the British monarchy will surely be of interest to Anglophiles everywhere.