Nicky Haslam gives an intimate tour of his legendary folly | Design Notes

[birds chirping]

The point of decoration is to make people look prettier.

And that's what taste is really.

It's being nice to other people in the way you decorate.

[jazz music]

My first memory of seeing this place,

I was at a weekend party in Devon

and somebody said across the table at dinner,

We're finding it very hard to rent

John Fowler's house.

And I thought, I haven't heard these words

that it's impossible that that incredible house

is for rent.

And I drove back from Devon, drove right

down the road

to the other side of the lake

and first saw it across the lake on on a summer evening.

And of course it was just unbelievable.

You couldn't credit that anything be beautiful.

And I applied for it and got it.

[jazz music continues]

Stop the deer from getting in.

But not you.

[jazz music continues]

This is what I call the sun pavilion.

'Cause it gets all the sun.

That one's the eating pavilion.

'Cause it's in the shade.

[jazz music continues]

But this whole area

between Windsor

and Winchester was royal hunting forest.

And then in the 1720s, somebody put on this facade

which is not gothic as you, It's [indistinct].

God, I've used this house so much.

I've used it in every single season.

It's just perfect.

[jazz music continues]

I had my 40th birthday party here

and we had a huge marquee down by the lake.

And then at midnight there were fireworks

and so they were only silver.

And mauve.

[jazz music continues]

Oh, lots of people have been here.

John Gielgud.

Versaces, Joan Fontaine, the movie star.

Joan Collins.

Lucian Freud, Tom Stoppard.

[jazz music continues]

I'd never thought of being a decorator.

I'd done my apartment in New York

and I'd done two apartments

in New York and then the ranch in Arizona.

Who hasn't wanted to be a cowboy by the way.

[laughs]

It was really, was like living in a movie.

[jazz music continues]

And when I came back from 10, 11 years in America,

I had no idea what I was gonna do.

I hadn't got a clue and

I thought I'd work at Vogue,

I'd thought about Hollywood and the movies,

I'd be the cowboy.

What was I gonna do?

And somebody offered me, asked me,

to the house in London started then and I did it.

This room is center

of the house and the garden.

Yes, I do gravitate to this

[jazz music continues]

but I also love living in the kitchen.

I love,

I'm a kitchen liver.

When I'm alone, I sit

in the kitchen, watching television and munching.

[jazz music continues]

I think the bottoms are the perfect sales people

for this sort of house.

They've got romance in their sales.

But I'll miss, miss the atmosphere

and the fun it was being here.

[jazz music continues]

I love souvenirs.

I like things that remind me of things.

But actually that right beside you

that letter from Lancet Ancaster, admiring a job I'd done.

That's pretty sentimentally grand.

I love this.

I got it in Moscow.

I think it's completely wonderful.

But this stool, I actually tapestried myself

and it's outline of the gables of the hunting lodge

with the trellis work with the windows.

[jazz music continues]

This is quite fun

'cause it looks rather like the [indistint]

doesn't it?

Same sort glitter.

It's a letter that Paris Hilton sent me

the next day after a ball

she came to of mine.

But it's largely about herself

I do see.

As you might expect, be it Paris Hilton.

[jazz music continues]

Lot of mess in here.

It's my dressing room.

This room is the original John Fowler decore.

And then he put these strips

of wallpaper border upwards

rather than along top of the wall or bottom.

I believe that houses and rooms

talk to you.

I think walls have eyes and ears.

They will say, do this to me and don't do that to me.

The room speaks, the client speaks

and I speak and I hope I win.

[jazz music continues]