What bliss to be back at Leighton House in Holland Park, open again at last after a delicate redevelopment. Once the home of the artist Frederic Leighton (1830-96), it’s surely London’s best-kept secret: Victorian redbrick without, orientalist fantasy within.
For me, the highlight of the £8m project is the restoration of Leighton’s winter studio, now scattered with old wooden easels; the building’s main attractions, of course, remain exactly the same. No matter how many times I visit, I can never get over the Arab hall, in which a fountain plays beneath a vast golden dome. If it’s mad, it’s also exquisite. Walk around, and you expect to smell rose petals and cardamom; impossible to believe, as your jaw swings, that Waitrose and M&S are only minutes away.
