Perfect English | Ros Byam Shaw
Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Ros Byam Shaw: I'm Rose Byam Shaw and my latest book is Perfect English: Small and Beautiful.
Suzy Chase: I want to read a part you wrote that really pulled me in. But the idea for this book came to me when I clocked that the last three homes I had written about were all decidedly bijou. Then thinking back over the hundreds of interiors I have visited and described in a 40 year career, I realized that the more modest ones belonging to the people without the big budgets had the most appeal. I would love to hear a bit about that light bulb moment.
Ros Byam Shaw: Well, it was a coincide in a way because I wrote three stories for magazines in a row and they were all about houses that I really love. And when I thought about it, I realized that they were all notably small. And that's in a way quite unusual for a writer like me because I write for glossy magazines. I write for Cabana and The World of Interiors and House and Garden as well as doing the books. And I have to say more often than not, these are not small houses I'm writing about. They tend to be bigger houses, the kind of house that tends to get featured in a glossy magazine, but these are all notably small and they were all really fabulous. And that started me thinking about other very small houses I'd written about because I have written about other small houses for books and for magazines, and it made me realize that there was something about them that I really loved.
And I think it's partly to do with the fact that they're often, that what they look like is not so much a question of the money spent as the creativity. These are often people who are working on a slightly more limited budget than someone with a bigger house. And also, I guess there's something about that kind of concentrated charm that is really lovely. So that's what got me thinking. Maybe this could translate into a book, a book that just concentrated on smaller houses. And there are a couple of London flats, but I didn't want only to do, well, you'd call 'em apartments. I didn't want only to do apartments because city apartments in very expensive cities like London and New York are often small of necessity. You've got to be extremely rich to afford space in London or New York. So I wanted to look more really at cottages outside cities rather than just flats and apartments. And it was amazing how many lovely locations we came up with.
Suzy Chase: Yes, I live in New York City in the West Village, which is so cute, but we have 950 square feet.
Ros Byam Shaw: Yeah, well that is about the size of most of these houses about, and I mean, in fact, I do say in the introduction that maybe it's not entirely fair to use the word small because actually that is about the size of the average UK new build. So most people, according to the title of this book, live in Small Houses, I think it's more contextual. It's the fact that glossy magazines, glossy books about interior decorating are, as I said earlier, usually concentrate on houses with a bit more floor space.
Suzy Chase: A lot of the glossy interior design books that I get, it feels like a dream. I would never be able to attain that. But these homes in your new book, it's like I could do that.
Ros Byam Shaw: Yeah, I'm so glad you said that. I think there's something lovely about aspirational books. We all read Vogue and very few of us look anything like that. But there is something about the dream that is very alluring and enticing, and I think a lot of decorating books are catering for that. And you can often pick ideas out from bigger houses, but a lot of people have said to me that this book feels so much more relevant to them, so much more accessible because it is showing whole houses how people actually occupy that space as efficiently and as elegantly as possible where you put the washing machine, the television where you put the vacuum cleaner, all those things that we all have, that we all need, that it can be really hard to find space for.
Suzy Chase: I thought it was really interesting that a lot of the people in this book call themselves collectors.
Ros Byam Shaw: That's very true. I think that's partly to do with the perfect English style umbrella, which is effectively maximalist rather than minimalist. So a lot of the people I end up writing about would call themselves collectors, whether that's pictures or China. And I think the nice thing about a small house, and I am personally finding this having done our move from a bigger house to a much smaller house, is that if you are a collector and you have limited space, you've got to be very, very careful about what you choose. So a lot of people talk about the one in one out policy. A lot of people also say they don't really stick to it, but you have to make a lot of decisions if you have a small space about what you really want to keep and what you don't. And a lot of people in the book who describe themselves as collectors will say that they're constantly upgrading their collection and refining their collection because they haven't got space to keep everything. So if they find another version of something they've already got that's a better version, the other lesser version has to go.
Suzy Chase: That's tough. So you just mentioned that you had to downsize and it coincided with signing on to do this book.
Ros Byam Shaw: That was a strange coincidence. I came up with the idea for this book way before last Christmas, sometime in Autumn last year. I started thinking about it and I suggested it to my publisher and they really liked it. They said, yeah, it's a great idea. Let's see how many more locations we could find that could work. And we talked about a deadline, which was this summer, and we talked about a photography schedule. All that was underway, and for 25 years we'd lived in a big, big house that was a sort of family house. It's where we brought up our children. Both our daughters had got married there, well in the local church and had marquees in the garden. We'd had christenings there. It was a real family hub. It was where everybody came because we had the space to accommodate everybody. And I guess we'd always thought as we got older, well we'll probably have to move at some stage because it had a very big garden, quite a lot of land, and Richard, my husband and I, we were sort of trying to run it on our own really.
We didn't have a huge amount of help with it. So there was always the thought that at some point we were going to have to downsize. It was just not now. It was always not now, and then various things happened. So we put the house on the market and slightly to our consternation. It sold absolutely instantly. I mean literally within days which we weren't expecting and we hadn't found anywhere to go and we've very much wanted to stay in the same town. One of our daughters lives in the same town. We've got lots of friends. It's a lovely place to live. So we were suddenly scrambling around trying to find another house and there wasn't anything. There was nothing at all. I got terribly depressed because I really loved our house. It's Tudor. I mean it was beautiful big Elizabethan house with walled gardens, so finding a smaller alternative was always going to be difficult.
The house that we're in now where I'm speaking from now, happened to come on the market just after we sold, and it's also Elizabethan, which is really lovely and it's a very charming house. The only travel is it's really quite a lot smaller than we had thought we would be able to manage. So suddenly I'd signed up to do the book. I had a deadline for the book for the end of summer, and we'd sold the house and we had a big house gardens, outbuildings, attics to clear before we moved into this very much smaller house that we wanted and a book to finish. It was a sort of oddly parallel set of activities because I was madly getting rid of stuff, trying to find good homes for things. Daughters, took some friends, took some, sold some, but it was really, it was an ongoing process and it was very full time.
And in between times I was writing this book and I was visiting all these small houses, and actually it was wonderful because it kept me going because I would be constantly reinspired and reinvigorated by going to see these small houses. Well actually to be fair, are smaller than the house we have moved into and thinking, well, this is wonderful. We're going to be absolutely fine. So actually, although it was very stressful in terms of time, it was rather wonderful in terms of the emotions and even the practicalities of having to shrink our worldly possessions write right down. It was strange, but it was good.
Suzy Chase: Imagine if you hadn't been writing that book. It seemed like a very therapeutic time.
Ros Byam Shaw: You're right.
Suzy Chase: I feel like it would've been really sad and depressing if you weren't writing the book and getting that really great inspiration from people.
Ros Byam Shaw: Yeah, I mean the book was such a great help and support. As I say, it was a little bit of a double-edged sword because I just felt like a headless chicken never seemed to be enough time in the day to do anything, but it was very, very good for me. Psychologically, it was really good because I was mourning leaving this house and letting go of stuff is quite an emotional thing to do. So yeah, it was very supportive. It was a supportive process.
Suzy Chase: I think it was Mario Buatta who once said, I like things more than people. I'd love to hear about how your perspective shifted once your items went into storage. So how did you start to feel more detached and missed them less because I need to learn from you.
Ros Byam Shaw: That's a really interesting question, and I would encourage anyone trying to do this that actually once you start, it's a much easier and in a way more positive experience than you think it's going to be. I had a few key things that I started with, this is going to sound so odd, but I had kept all the dolls I had from when I was a little girl, even the ones I didn't like very much, and they were one of the first things to go. There was a big wicker work trunk that I had them in and I thought, no, this is ridiculous. They've got to go. And I let them go and the decision to let them go was hard, but letting them go was fine. Once they'd gone, I realized it was fine. And then the next big, big thing, which was a big thing as well as a big emotional thing, was a really beautiful grand piano that I had bought with the money from my first book advance.
And I'm terrible at playing the piano. I tinkled around on it a bit, but I'm not very good. And it was a really beautiful 1875 Steinway Rosewood grand piano. So a great big bit of furniture. And making the decision to let that go was big because it was like saying we are never again going to have a room big enough to accommodate a grand piano. So as that came down the stairs from the upstairs library, that felt like a really pivotal point. Then after that, in a way, things got easier and easier. The more you let go, the easier you realize it is to do it.
Suzy Chase: Wow. I'm just so attached to things, all my old things, this is the couch I grew up with.
Ros Byam Shaw: It's lovely.
Suzy Chase: And I keep recovering the seats and so hard.
Ros Byam Shaw: It is hard, but the thing is, it's not like I had to let go of everything. It didn't. It's just a question of prioritizing. I mean, if everything had gone, I think that would've been different. I might've felt really bereft. And that happens to people that fires. I mean, look at what's happened terrible, and you lose everything. Well, that was not happening to me. I was just having to make a lot of decisions about what I could live without and what I really wanted to keep.
Suzy Chase: To pivot just a little bit, will you talk about some of the powerful environmental and economic attractions of a smaller property?
Ros Byam Shaw: Well, I mean, one thing we have already noticed, and we've been here for six months and we like it very much, is that our running costs have plummeted. And I guess that in itself can only be good for the environment. If you live on a smaller footprint as it were, your carbon footprint is immediately going to be smaller. All your heating bills, your gas, your electricity are going to be a lot less. We've been warmer in this house than we've been for 25 years, living in a terribly drafty house with big rooms, and this house is just really cozy. So in the wealthy west, it seems to me that everything we do is getting bigger and more carbon heavy. Our cars, if you look at cars from even just 20 years ago, 40 years ago, they were really little. They look little now, and we all drive around in these absolutely enormous cars, which guzzle fuel. And it's the same with houses. I mean, I would never advocate going back to a time when children used to share a bad and often big families lived in houses with one bedroom. I don't think we could possibly manage to go back to that. Maybe we have got a bit too greedy with space and size and that can't be good for the environment.
Suzy Chase: You say in the book it's the ceiling height rather than the floor space in small houses that can be limiting. I'm so curious about that.
Ros Byam Shaw: Well, I said that because it was one of the things that came up, a couple of the house owners said when they were looking for somewhere and they could only afford somewhere small, that they were looking specifically for ceiling height for particular pieces of furniture, two of which are absolute classics of the sort of English country house style interior, one being a grandfather clock, and they do tend to be quite tall, another being a four post bed, which also tend to be quite tall. But I mean, the other thing about ceiling height is that it does make a big, big difference to how you feel the space in a room. So you can have a bigger floor space and a lower ceiling, and the room will feel smaller than if you have a smaller space and a higher ceiling. A high ceiling really expands the sense of space in a way that pure floor space. So a couple of people in the book have managed to get planning permission, even in old houses, to lift the upstairs ceilings a little bit into the roof, and that will make a small room feel a lot more spacious.
Suzy Chase: You also tell us another clever way to open up some space is to rehang doors. Can you talk a bit about that?
Ros Byam Shaw: Yeah, I mean that's something I would never have thought of myself, but one of the decorators, Libby Lord has done it in her house and it is very clever. What she's done is she's the bedroom doors so that instead of opening in to the bedroom, they open out onto the landing. And of course that gives you another whole bit of wall space. You don't think of doors as taking up space, but when you open them, they do take up, if you want them to open properly, they take up wall space basically. So another thing that people have done, and this is something that I had come across before, is to use curtains instead of doors. So you just have a thick, heavy curtain that hangs across maybe a doorway between two rooms and that pulls back and takes up a lot less space than if you had a door folding back against the wall. You can also use doors to hang your pictures on. Some people in the book have done that.
Suzy Chase: It's not a door leaning on a wall. It's literally a door that's still in use. And they've hung their pictures on it.
Ros Byam Shaw: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Oh wow.
Ros Byam Shaw: Just use doors as extra picture space, but they can't be too heavy. They have to be quite small.
Suzy Chase: I might have to use that. Yeah, I'm running out of wall space.
Ros Byam Shaw: Look it up in the book. It can look really, really good. I guess you have to fix them fairly securely. Otherwise every time you open and shut the door, they're going to be sort of rattling around.
Suzy Chase: But
Ros Byam Shaw: It looks great.
Suzy Chase: You can't get mad and slam the door either.
Ros Byam Shaw: No, no, no. The glass in the picture might shatter. That would be a disaster.
Suzy Chase: What's one small change anyone can make to instantly improve our home according to you?
Ros Byam Shaw: Okay, the thing I'm always banging on about is lighting because you'll know that you can make a not incredibly attractive space. Look infinitely more attractive with good lighting and absolutely vice versa. A lovely room can be really almost ruined by a strong overhead, central light, strong overhead central lights are the least flattering sort of light, I think probably for people as well as for rooms. So I would just say turn off your central light and have lamps in corners. Any room actually a big room or a small room lit at about sort of a head level or chest level with lamps or wall lights also work well. But a harsh overhead central light just does no favors to any interior. And we all know how incredibly flattering candlelight is. I mean, if you really want to improve your house, just like candles and it'll look wonderful.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. I look so good in candlelight.
Ros Byam Shaw: Oh, we all do.
Suzy Chase: I think my favorite home in the book is furniture restorer Guy Marshall's 11 and a half foot wide home. Could you chat about that?
Ros Byam Shaw: It's interesting you say that because that was the first of the three very small houses that I wrote about when we were talking earlier, the houses that inspired me to write the book, it was the very first one. And it is completely magical because it is very, very plain on the outside. You would never guess what was behind that door. And you open the door and it is like a treasure trove of beauty. He's a collector. He's got a very, very refined eye. He's a furniture restorer, so he really knows his furniture and his passion is for 18th century furnishings, China pictures. And on a tiny budget, he's managed to amass the most amazing collection, and it's probably one of the densest interiors. It's very, very full
Suzy Chase: Dense.
Ros Byam Shaw: But he's got such a good eye that the way he's arranged things, there is still an elegance to it. It doesn't just look like clutter. And because the things are beautiful in themselves, that obviously really helps. But he made me laugh so much because when he bought the house, it had fitted carpet, it had a fitted kitchen, it had central heating, and he literally went in, he ripped out the fitted carpets. He took out all the radiators because radiators take up too much space and bit by bit, he just took out the fitted kitchen and put bits of beautiful 18th century furniture in there instead. So his kitchen has shrunk down to literally a tiny little stub of kitchen at the end of this room. And all it consists of is a sink a little, I dunno if you know what a baby belling is. Do you know what a baby belling is? No. Okay. It's really old fashioned, very small electric cooker about the size of a microwave and it's made of enamel. So that's what he cooks in. And he literally heats a sort of copper kettle on the bay. He doesn't have an electric kettle. I think he's got a toaster and he's got one kitchen cupboard, and that's an 18th century corner cupboard.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh.
Ros Byam Shaw: He's amazing. And that house actually is a case in point. We were talking about how in a way we've come very, very privileged and very greedy with space. When he'd first moved into that house, there was a knock on the door. And a lady in her eighties said she wondered if she could look around because she used to live there as a little girl. And since she lived there, it had been extended into the backyard. So the kitchen, in fact, is an extension. When she lived there, the house was one room downstairs with a staircase going up for it and one room upstairs, that was it. And her parents, and I think she had at least one sibling lived there. And her father made shoes. He was a cobbler, and he worked in a space underneath the living room floor, down a little ladder through a trap door in the dark, no window.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh.
Ros Byam Shaw: And you know that. And she was brought up there, that whole family. And as the house is now with its kitchen and bathroom extension, we would think of that as a pretty small house. But it was much originally, that's how it was designed, which just sort of in a way goes to show I think how spoiled in the wealthy west we have become in terms of space that was quite ordinary for a whole family to live in two rooms anyway, it's a wonderful house and guy's done amazing things with it. And upstairs there's a bedroom and there's a tiny little box room, and the bedroom is literally completely filled by a four poster bed, but it completely fills the room. He has to do this kind of strange somersault across the bed to get from the door to the window. It's ridiculous.
Suzy Chase: I noticed that with the exception of Caroline Holdaway and Fatima Namdar Cotswolds Cottage, the homes in this book use so much drapery and wallpaper to create these cozy spaces.
Ros Byam Shaw: That's very true. And again, I think that's partly because all the houses I've chosen come under the perfect English style umbrella, and that is a very classic English country house decorating thing to have a lot of fabric. You have sofas piled up with cushions, you have fat curtains, you probably have wallpaper in bedrooms. And it is amazing how much of that you can fit into a small space. And it has a very cocooning effect. It makes for a really sort of cozy interior. And I guess that's intensified in these very small houses. I mean, in fact, the other one in the book that's not like that is the one in the Barbacon, which is the London flat of the designer Tom Morris. And that's a lot more minimalist. That and Caroline and Fatimas Hauser as minimal it gets as it gets. You're right. Otherwise there is a lot of pattern, a lot of texture. And that does create, as I say, of a real sense of warmth and enclosure in a house, which is nice in our climate, quite honestly, where it's often cold and damp.
Suzy Chase: So now to my segment called The Perfect Bite, where I ask you to describe the perfect bite of your favorite dish,
Ros Byam Shaw: This is going to make me feel so embarrassed because if I'm really honest, one of my favorite thing is sausages. Can I talk about sausages?
Suzy Chase: Sure. Why not? So what kind of sausage?
Ros Byam Shaw: A really good English pork sausage, obviously free range pork. Obviously. Our butcher in our town in Devon makes praise winning sausages, and they are really good. They've got no preservatives in them. They've got nothing nasty. They're just a proper traditional English sausage. I mean, is that something you would eat in the States and sausage is a thing?
Suzy Chase: Yes. Oh, totally. I have sausages in my fridge right now.
Ros Byam Shaw: Great. Oh, that's really good to know.
Suzy Chase: I might even make it for dinner!e
Ros Byam Shaw: So I feel so unsophisticated saying that I really like this sausage. No, I love it. I could equally say scallops or lobster or creme brulee, but I just reckon you can't beat a sausage or a bacon sandwich. I'm very fond of bacon sandwiches as well.
Suzy Chase: Yes, that's a good one too. So where can we find you on the web and social media?
Ros Byam Shaw: I do have Instagram, and that's just at Ros Byam Shaw. And I do run a shop with my daughter Elizabeth, selling antiques and vintage things, the sort of things that I have in my house. And that's called Perfect English Stuff. And we sell a lot to America, actually. We ship to America a lot.
Suzy Chase: Well, this has been delightful and I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show.
Ros Byam Shaw: It's been an absolute pleasure, real delight to talk to you. Thank you so, so much.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzychase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
