It was Nancy Lancaster who brought to fruition that style of decoration now universally known as the ‘English Country House Style’, or the ‘English Style’. A subtle amalgam that has at it’s heart ‘a cool and eclectic view’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English Country House Style seeks to produce a representation of a past that is in essence an illusion. The secret of Nancy’s success in creating this quintessentially English look lay in an assured sense of scale, boldness, a sharp wit, and an instinctive understanding of how to make a house mellow, elegant and unpretentious. She carried these same qualities into the garden, where she worked in a formal yet romantic neo-Georgian style which remains a strong spirit in garden design.

In this book Martin Wood explores Nancy’s contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by carefully analysing her own houses and gardens – large and small – and her work for Colefax & Fowler, the decorating business she bought from Sibyl Colefax in 1944. He also chronicles her remarkable life: her three very different marriages; her dynamic design partnership with John Fowler; her interactions with friends and guests including her aunt Nancy Astor, Duff and Lady Diana Cooper, the Duchess of Devonshire (then Deborah Mitford), David Nivan, Anthony Eden and – in the darkest days of the Second World War – Winston Churchill.