When I was in Great Britain, one of the highlights was to go to Windsor Castle and see Queen Mary's doll house. It was awe inspiring. Mary Stewart-Wilson has written a book, lavishly illustrated with color photographs and floor plans, to bring the experience to life, even if you haven't made a visit in person. The history of the house to the furnishings to the architect who made it all possible are outlined in detail. The only thing missing is photos of each of the four sides of the house, which would be helpful in getting a perspective of where each room is placed, especially important for the two mezzanines.

The house is a record of how the privileged classes lived after the Great War, including the servants. The house has electricity and running water - all the faucets and commodes work! There are books and art work made especially for the house. The book also shows the tiny details that you miss when looking at a complete room - the contents of a desk, an iron, beds with hot water bottles between the sheets, wine bottles actually filled with wine, and many other treats and surprises.

You can spend hours looking at the photos and still miss the rich detail until the next time you open the book. A treasure indeed! ( )

I was so enchanted by Royal Collection Official Guide Book to Queen Mary's Dolls' House that I ordered this one figuring (correctly) that there would be other unique pictures. This is the better of the two books - nearly three times as long and filled with more pictures, especially detail shots of the tiny furnishings and decorations. I am charmed by Cripp's method of showing scale: he poses the tiny cricket bat next to a regulation cricket ball, and the little golf clubs next to a real golf ball. This also includes a section on how the house is aging: fading wallpaper, damaged paint, etc. All of the pictures, except for a few that are historic, are in color. This is unfortunately out of print, and may be more expensive, so the purchaser will have to weigh issues of cost and availability for themselves. I think that either would do as a souvenier.

If someone is really interested, I would recommend getting both books. The Royal Collection Official Guidebook is a pretty good buy at $11.95 and a nice supplement to this one. A very few of the shots are in both, but not enough to make them redundant to the person who wants all the information they can get. Generally, the duplicate shots are slightly large in the S-W book. To compare and contrast the two, while the S-W book has more of everything, the RC book still has some unique shots. The photographs in this book take in the entire room, while the RC book often shoots the room at an angle, cutting off part of the room, but what is shown is sometimes in better focus and a bit larger. To compare the shots of the Queen's bedroom, the Stewart-Wilson shot shows the entire bedroom. The Royal Collection shot, at an angle , reveals some additional details such as the fire screen and the chinoiserie cabinet, but cuts off the exteme left-hand side of the room. (Her Majesty has apparently been rearranging her decorative items since the S-W book.) The S-W detail of the 18th century pietre-dure table concentrates on showing the design on the top. The RC detail shows more of the table and the objects normally on it. The historical sections, revealing how the house came to be built are the most different, and the RC book has more pictures of people who participated in creating the doll house and of the room in which it now sits with the Phillip Connard mural. The captions are overlapping, but not identical, and so one gains more information by having both. ( )