What's your ideal home? Perhaps the one you live in now, maybe some unattainable fantasy dwelling. Homes - whether real or imagined - are so important to us in ways other than the purely practical that they hold a fascination like almost nothing else.
Endless hours of television look at the buying, renovation, furnishing, design - and selling - of houses, and newagents' shelves display the vast choice of magazines on the subject. This perhaps reflects the fact that we invest such emotional energy in our homes that - amongst other things - they represent a unique and important means of self-expression.
Anyone interested in domestic architecture will find this little book a treat. The House Book: Mini Edition is a collection of 500 houses spanning all periods, styles, major architects, design movements and cultures. Arranged alphabetically, the juxtapositions through up some striking contrasts such as Sir Edwin Lutyens' Deanery Gardens on the page opposite a Maasai hut, or Nicholas Hawksmoor's classical Easton Neston next to a Hebridean croft. It is a fascinating collection, covering everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, and illustrating the lengths to which people will go to put a roof over their heads.
What is your ideal home?
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Still on the subject of buildings, I bought The House Book not online or in a major high street retailer, but in the biggest rural bookshop in the Scottish Highlands, The Watermill in Aberfeldy. As its name suggests, it's housed in a converted mill (the race is there, as is the machinery) and it incorporates a gallery and coffee shop along with its excellent selection of books. We went to the town specifically to visit that shop and we were not disappointed, so not only is it meeting the needs of the local population, it's bringing people into the area, too.
