The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors, Paperback

The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. One day, the houses will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will remain. In this dazzling work of imaginative re-construction, Edward Hollis takes us to the sites of five great spaces now lost to history and pieces together the fragments he finds there to re-create their vanished chambers. From Rome's Palatine to the old Palace of Westminster and the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and from the sets of the MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal Palace and his own grandmother's sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the people who, for a short time, made them their home.

Born in London in 1970, EDWARD HOLLIS studied Architecture at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh before joining a practice, working first on ruins and follies in Sri Lanka and then on villas, breweries and town halls in Scotland. He teaches at Edinburgh College of Art and his first book, The Secret Lives of Buildings, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010.