The Buildings of Green Park: A tour of certain buildings, monuments and other structures in Mayfair and St James’s
Andrew Jones, £25, 168 pages, ACC Art Books
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Green Park is a strangely forgotten park. But it was once – as this charming little book shows – the grandest in the land.
Yes, it still has some pretty grand residents. The Duke of Wellington lives at Number 1 London, Apsley House, at the south-west corner. And Her Majesty is at the south-east corner, at Buckingham Palace.
But Piccadilly and Queen’s Walk were once crammed with the great and the good. Spencer House – with its exotic interiors by James “Athenian” Stuart – is still owned by the Spencers (as in Princess Diana) but it’s on a long lease to Lord Rothschild. The Dukes of Devonshire fled London for Chatsworth a century ago, leaving Devonshire House – a huge Palladian beauty – to be replaced by a 1926 New York-classical tower block.
