I’m pleased to see that Strawberry Hill, birthplace of the Gothic Revival in the personage of Horace Walpole, has been restored. Walpole initiated the Gothic novel, with his The Castle of Otranto (1764). The 2005-2015 restoration of the house is finished, and the curators are now able to also restore much of Walpole’s original collection to their original places around the house…

“A complex exhibition involving more than 49 lenders, including a significant number of private collectors, its principal aim is to display Walpole’s pieces in their original settings”.

This major exhibition, “Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill: Masterpieces from Horace Walpole’s Collection”, is at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham, England. It opens on 20th October and runs through to 24th February 2019. The location of the house is about ten miles west of the centre of London, in a district of London that is safe for tourists to visit.

This exhibition could be your only chance to fully savour some of the original physical context for the birth of the neo-Gothic and the Gothic novel.