Before I sat down to write this letter, I was in the midst of drafting a speech to give at my 40th birthday party. I’ve spent recent weeks contemplating my past decade, what I have and haven’t done, whether either matters all that much, and ultimately how lucky I am to have amassed a group of friends that I love and want to celebrate with. As I was mulling these ideas over, rolling them around in my head like marbles in a bowl, a notification popped up on my phone alerting me to the news of David Hockney’s death. Within minutes the internet, and my Instagram feed, were ablaze with obituaries and dedications; the life of a painter, a son, a friend, an avid smoker, distilled into a finite number of words, characters and pictures: images of a young Hockney in cerulean socks, sitting on the floor of his studio flat in Notting Hill; a beautiful photograph by Peter Schlesinger of him standing below a billowing scarlet curtain. Hockney in a chequered cap; Hockney in a white cap; Hockney in an array of cardigans, spectacles and ties. In short, a million versions of this indomitable artist. In the weeks preceding his death, I noticed a flurry of posters pop up along the gloomy corridors of London’s underground, instructing commuters to ‘put your phone down/Look with both eyes’ in Hockney’s handwritten text. This message encapsulates so much of what he was brilliant at: the simple act of looking and, as he put it, ‘liv[ing] in the now’. A true clarion call, and one I hope to remember as I tip from one decade to the next.
There is plenty within these pages that requires much more than a glance. The cover of our August issue is very special indeed: it features a collage made by Denmark’s Queen Margrethe, who largely composed it using images snipped and pasted together from the pages of this very magazine. On a winter’s day this year, David Lipton visited Fredensborg Palace to find out more. A different sort of collage and confection is shown in St Benedict, a B&B in East Sussex where what was once a soulless conversion is now a hymn to high-Victorian decoration. Elsewhere, we visit Bidyut Kumar Roy and Lipi Biswas’s West Bengal house, which is a monument to the wonders of clay and mud. Aptly, a London apartment we encounter is home to a prized collection of Modern British art, including work by Hockney. Over in New York, Pat Oleszko is a puppeteer, performer, sculptor, activist, Guggenheim fellow, self-defined ‘fool’ and resident of a gloriously colourful loft apartment, shot for us by Tina Tyrell. Arrow House to the southwest, in New Mexico, meanwhile, is a descendant of sustainable Earthship architecture and will no doubt resonate with those seeking ‘distance from the cultural mainstream’, as Michael Bullock writes. Our final story is a house belonging to Simon Upton, photographer extraordinaire, longtime WoI contributor and much respected linchpin of the interiors world. For all those nosy souls among us, we finally persuaded Simon to photograph his own house: the results are beautiful.
I hope this issue invites you to follow Hockney’s advice and ‘look with both eyes’. And just in case that missive hadn’t quite landed for me, as I was midway through writing this letter, my phone, unbidden, locked me out of Instagram, giving me a full 48 hours of unencumbered ‘looking’. Message received, loud and clear.
A version of this story appeared in the August 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers
