This book is an antidote to the sterility of the modern age. It's about capturing the romance of the past, but it doesn't advocate throwing away your washing machine and living in an old fashioned way. This is primarily an inspirational source book. As the featured interiors are often laced with fakery, Barbara explains how to recreate the tricks the designers used: she shows why a room looks romantic, and how the effect can be achieved through colours, paint, wallpaper, flower arrangements or still-lives on a shelf. The opening chapter of the book is a detailed story of the featured houses. The following sections are divided room by room: halls, sitting rooms, studies, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens and dining rooms. The creators of these interiors are not all designers by trade, but with imagination they have created an individual and romantic style of their own.