Today’s interior inspiration comes from “a true aesthete with a taste for imperfection”, the London townhouse of 88-year-old former fashion designer, Victoria Press. The house, which sits on one of London’s most historic streets, Cheyne Walk, is a five-story Queen Anne most famously known as the place where the novelist George Eliot very briefly lived and died in 1880. Press,whose décor sensibilities were self-taught, “educated herself by going to museums, reading design books, talking to antiques dealers and enrolling in art history classes.” This London townhouse is her masterpiece . . .

“If you learn to listen, the house will give you cues to what needs to be done.” —Victoria Press

“The walls of the entry hall are covered in murals depicting moody landscapes by John Devoto, a Baroque painter, and on the ceiling Venus rises from the sea, the brainchild of James Thornhill, an 18th-century English artist.” —T Magazine