THE LIFE FOR ME

A love affair with a Georgian house in Sussex is the outcome of the author's ""fretful exasperation"" with urban living and here is his devotional to reconstructing, furnishing and equipping it. Determined to escape the stereotyped and second rate, his search was short for the first house he looked at, in spite of incompatible additions and changes, claimed him and inspired him to the record of this first two years in it. What he did -- to the interior and exterior -- and how he did it; how the accumulation of years, in water colors, furniture, books, his hobbies and international tastes fitted into his scheme of things; how he met the challenges to his courage (in financing) and ingenuity (in decorating, in renting space to tenants); how he used his Indian, African and antique collections; his discoveries and triumphs in the garden -- all this is companionable reading for the house-in-the-country-minded. He does not neglect food and drink, books and cooking, the ornamental to baroque embellishments he introduced, and his type of living gives him both pleasure and pride. Perhaps the most eruptive in the rash of domestic chronicles now appearing.