On the banks of the River Thames, near Twickenham, sits Strawberry Hill House. This Gothic Revival villa, with its dazzling white exterior, its turrets and arched windows, was the creation of one extraordinary man, who built it as a giant showcase for his collection of artworks, antiquities and curiosities.
He was Horace Walpole (1717-1797), the youngest son of Britain’s first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. Today, he is best-known as the author of the first-ever Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, and as a prolific letter-writer, whose correspondence gives us a fascinating glimpse into 18th-century life.
In his own lifetime though, it was Strawberry Hill, and the eclectic collection it housed, that made Walpole famous, and this winter the two are to be reunited for an exciting new exhibition. Lost…
