‘To my Lady Pembroke’s,” as Dr Johnson might have written, for a thoroughly jolly post-lockdown evening of champagne and canapés to celebrate the launch of John Martin Robinson’s eponymous history of Wilton House (Rizzoli Electa, 2021). The famous Double Cube Room would look over-the-top anywhere else; at Wilton it makes perfect sense as the heady culmination of the house’s magnificent 17th-century piano nobile.
Successive Earls of Pembroke have remodelled the building since it first came into the Herbert family in the 1540s. William Herbert was a favourite of Henry VIII, and the estate at Wilton was originally monastic. Wilton Abbey was no ordinary convent, however, even in the days when religious houses proliferated.
