Making a Compleat Gentleman

West Wycombe Manor was set in a beautiful Park and the perfect setting for a man of means who also enjoyed the good life. Its colonaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England recalling perhaps many happy times spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of his friends country houses today it is a perfect film set for eighteenth century period films because it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of civilised life. Is it the perfect Temple to Taste of a Compleat Gentleman?

Wine, Woman & Song

Wine was made before history was recorded. For thousands of years it has given comfort, pleasure and evoked high spirits among man people in many different countries and cultures.

Evolution of Art, Design and Style – Antiquity to Avatar

‘Just as a palate can be educated to appreciate fine wine so too can both the eye and the ear be educated to distinguish the rare from the ordinary, the exquisite from the mundane’. Pare Keiha, Associate Professor, Dean – Tumuaki AUT, Auckland NZ

THE EVOLUTION ART, DESIGN & STYLE
ARTISTIC TASTE – ANTIQUITY – AVATAR
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The Quest for Nature – William Kent

…’reflecting on ‘nature has done little or nothing; man a great deal, and time has improved his labours’ John Claudius Loudon
Author Carolyn McDowall
Alexander Pope was just one influential English poet contributing to the debate and climate of opinion that had an effect on societies mores and concerns, as well as the art of garden design [...]

Women of Influence – Empress Josephine, a rose for all time

And I will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies…Christopher Marlowe
Author Carolyn McDowall
The very arresting beauty, and quite remarkable Marie Joséphine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie de Beauharnais (1763-1814) was imprisoned in the Bastille with her husband General Vicomte de Beauharnais during the French Revolution.
He and the men [...]