How to use books to style your home interiors

Books can be an untapped tools for home interior stylists

Ikea's Mosslanda picture ledge can also prop up eye-catching book covers (55cm length €7).

During a recent rainy Saturday tidy-up of my bookcases, I reacquainted myself with a second-hand bookshop find called Books Do Furnish a Room (Merrell, 2009), by the late interiors writer Leslie Geddes-Brown.

It had sat forgotten, sandwiched between a bodice-ripper and a Booker Prize winner, but its unearthing (while in pursuit of a reread of the bodice-ripper), warranted tea on the sofa to gorge on aspirational book displays in gothic castles and super-cool apartments.