5 of the Best Interior Design Books for October

Furlow Gatewood is a quintessential Southern gentleman and his beloved property in bucolic Americus, Georgia has absorbed him for over six decades. The four intimate dwellings exemplify various southern architectural traditions – from a mid-nineteenth-century Gothic to Palladian. Gatewood shares his personal reflections on how he has created this charming and unique world for himself tailored to his refined sensibility. Captured in thoughtful photographs, his seductive spaces are the very model of a relaxed Arcadian style.

Twelve elegant French houses are illustrated including the Château de Champchevrier and Hubert de Givenchy’s elegant Parisian townhouse that is imbued with grandeur and comfort in the style of Napolean III. Key periods of French decoration are represented by the featured houses that are illustrated with specially commissioned photography.

This is a history of the most notable houses in England and Wales and their occupants, seen as integral to the houses they created, where their descendants, in many cases, still live today. The original photographs show the unexpected as well as the familiar – the private rooms and the servants’ quarters as well as the grand exteriors and state rooms, the gardens and vast landscapes. Some of the most splendid examples of English art and architecture are included, illustrating the work of Inigo Jones, John Vanbrugh, Thomas Chippendale, Robert Adam and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.