We are taken into a world of luxury and refinement beyond imagination: butlers setting a table for sixty in Baron Guy de Rothschild's palace, considered the grandest private house in France. Or a summer's day on the edge of Hubert de Givenchy's left-bank garden, where a table of six is set in eighteenth-century silver and porcelain. Visit the British Embassy, which still retains the décor and furniture of its erstwhile owner Paoline Borghese, sister of Napoleon. Tour the history-filled apartment of the Permanent Secretary to the French Academy. In some cases, the owners have refused to be identified, but that does not detract from the elegance of their interiors, the superb presentation of their food, or the fascinating descriptions of those who preceded them - including Madame de Stael, Proust's hero the Comtesse de Greffuhle, and a parade of now-departed bewigged grandees.
There have been other highly successful books on the great houses of Paris, but nothing this sumptuous or exclusive. This volume will seduce every Francophile, society watcher, and Paris lover, not to mention every decorator and party giver.
