As the great day approached, we decided to call round two other families for a lunch in the garden and a shared tv watching moment to take in the royal wedding and were very pleased it didn’t rain. We set the sitting room up with seats in rows – trying in light-hearted mode to set up a version of the old photograph of families gathered round the old tv set for the coronation, we found the atmosphere of an awe-struck audience came naturally however. We were certainly captivated, charmed and fascinated by the whole spectacle, pageantry and sense of history on display – curious to think it was being watched by some many millions around the world. I would have like to have watched people arriving more and found out who everyone was, but I was a bit busy with the champagne at that point. While I thought the BBC coverage good, I am told by a good friend that the Skytv commentator Alastair Bruce spoke with great knowledge and authority – that was rather missing from the BBC line up.

The architecture of the abbey was magnificent, elevating and a ‘national’ shrine. There is always something cheering about a wedding, but add the elegance of the bride, the uniforms, music and carefully orchestrated ceremony, and something undoubtedly moving occurred. It made all the grown-ups of our party think wistfully of our own weddings, nearly two decades ago now, and otherwise we devoted the rest of that sun-filled day to a long lunch for a dozen in the garden and party games – the daughters had made bunting from old curtains and we found some union jacks in the local co-op and one larger one in our own garden shed, so we felt we had entered the spirit and enjoyed ourselves. Us Cambridge dwellers gave the couple an extra champagne toast all round to celebrate their new title – very English, very smart and young. As we walked the dog in the evening, we came across some street parties still in party mode at 10pm!

From Tulsa I passed on to Shreveport in Louisiana, where I was the guest of Delton Harrrison, with a fine house built in the 1930s designed in an antebellum classical style by Howard F.Staub – one of the leading country house architects of those years based in Houston. The house is surrounded by trees and I noticed the sound of rusty swing but later was told this was probably the sound of a mocking bird, imitating a swing – a curious sensation. Mr Harrison is a wonderful host and the ESU lecture was given at the Shreveport Club and there were a hundred and twenty guests and cocktails before and a fine sit-down supper afterwards – of gumbo and red snapper. From Shreveport to Monroe, after giving my talk at their country club, to a friendly and enthusiastic audience, I was given another very good supper in an converted old warehouse overlooking the Ouichita River, just as the sun was going down.
From then on to New Orleans where I stayed with Dr Peeper, an Oxford-educated gynaecologist and his partner Michael who works for a law firm; they live in a very handsome house in the Garden Quarter. This is the year of the centenary of Tenessee Williams’s birth, so Dr Peeper has arranged for me to join a walking tour of all the streets on which Williams’ lived, which is fascinating and gives you a good feeling for the context of his writing – brought up in the genteel surroundings of his grandfather’s rectory he lived in poverty as a young writer, often barely able to pay his rent. Like a good southern gent, Dr Peeper insists we have lunch at Antoine’s a fine, old world French restaurant with waiters in black tie, where we eat gumbo (spicy soup) and local shrimp, and we drink a toast to Tennessee Williams in 25 cent martinis – and then admire photographs of the annual Mardi Gras parades. Couldn’t be better. We also do a tour of the main districts other than the French quarter, and I am interested to try and understand the impact of the hurricane and flood that followed, five years on – overall I am really quite beguiled by New Orleans and the constant flavour of a good party going on. Next stop Texas.

Bringing the final stages of my new book on English Country House Interiors together – it should be out this October – so my writing office begins a disreputable second hand bookshop as piles of books collapse into one another as footnotes pursued and dates and spellings checked, but overall the book is looking magnificent I am pleased to say, which makes it all worth it. Last week was at Ely Cathedral for the Fabric Advisory Committee meeting and thrilled to see the new ironwork reredos going up in the Lady Chapel, designed by John Maddison, who has a profound understanding of medieval architecture and the effect is simple and yet fitting for the grand architecture of the chapel.
Over half term I took my daughters to Dublin and we visited Trinity College and took a tour of Dublin Castle and some of the choicest squares – also looked at the eighteenth century Irish paintings in the National Gallery (after the girls had spent an afternoon hunting out vintage ball dresses in shops in the centre), and had a good list of tea shops and restaurants to try, from the Queen Tarts opposite the castle, to the excellent Silk Road Café in the Chester Beatty library, an excellent Palestinian chef. We stayed at Leixlip with the Guinnesses and the daughters had a tour of the treasures including the glorious dolls house from Newbridge and the Georgian domestic organ wound by hand. There is something very special about those Rococo Gothic castles in Ireland and Leixlip has its own stylish charms.

Just finished reading Michael Holroyd’s excellent A Book of Secrets on the lives of Lord Grimthorpe and his women, fiancée, Eve Fairfax, his mistress Alice Keppel and their illegitimate daughter Violet Trefusis; their lives all touched by the Villa Cimbrone near Ravello, where the lucky Mr Holroyd, a literary gentleman scholar of the old school, manages to find many of the relevant papers – how very fortunate.

The book is very interesting for its analysis of class, relationships and the early 20th century world of high society and the arts (Rodin makes a key appearance) and the relationship between Violet T and Vita Sackville-West. A sense of place is key, and Knole makes its presence felt, as well as the beguiling Villa Cimbrone. The book is just published in hardback at £16.99.

I am currently working on a major visual history of the interior decoration of the great English country houses which has led me on many adventures this year, and made me aware of how lucky we are to have so much great art and collections in this country, and how these authentic survivals are so very special a part of our island’s story. I am as intrigued by the evidence of individual stories and caprice as I am of the carefully orchestrated set-piece; and while my book will trace the story of interiors from 1600, I am once again rather, moved not just by the dazzling ambition of the 18th century, but by the romantic aestheticism of the early 20th century.

Have been enjoying the winter sun, leaf raking, dog walking on Stourbridge Common and as the sun sets on Midsummer Common, where you can glimpse the sunset on the river and the distant shape of Kings College and Bodley’s All Saints with the skeletal trees. Magical. Archie likes it too.