The three home interiors books to inspire a romantic revamp 

We check out three new must-reads that show how the weather, history and nostalgia inform Irish, French and US interiors 

Tullynally Castle, left, a 19th-century home in Sandymount, Dublin, centre, and the entrance to the 16th-century Château d'Outrelaise, Caen, France.

My first brush with romance was in the pages of a Mills & Boon, aged 13, before graduating on to Barbara Cartland’s historical novels and the discovery that chaste kisses in the parlour might lead to something more shenanigan-like in the boudoir. Still years away from Lady Chatterley and her lover in the woodshed, the locations were invariably French chateaux and English stately homes owned by a devastatingly handsome marquis, or an earl possessed of a chiselled jaw.

Back then I remember being fascinated by descriptions of the houses and furniture, typically four-poster beds, the location of choice for genteel young ladies wrung out by unrequited love to stifle their sobs into a feather pillow; and window shutters shielding longing glances cast in the direction of the romantic hero.