The power of patience

MY childhood was spent among books and architectural drawings. The latter were those of my grandfather, the Classical architect Raymond Erith, and the former were those of my father, who was a bookseller, so it is perhaps no surprise that I now live surrounded by both.

This house is in Winchester, where I moved 15 years ago to become a director of ADAM Architecture. At first, the house was rather empty and simply decorated in muted colours. To make it a bit more homely, I started buying furniture at local auction houses, mainly from Andrew Smith at Itchen Stoke near Winchester, Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury and Bellmans in Winchester. I found, to my surprise, that