Sudpsuez Christopher Gibbs: His World

Words by John Martin Robinson

Photographs by Ashley Hicks

Conceived by William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, and built between 1555 and 1587, Burghley House is a testament to the ambition and vision of the most powerful courtier of the first Elizabethan age.

Designed by Cecil himself, in consultation with the Dutch Renaissance architect and painter Hans Vredeman de Vries, the architecture and interiors at Burghley reflect a mix of contemporary fashionable influences. The house’s facades are each markedly different, with a striking and ornate Gothic gatehouse beneath a roofline of cupolas and obelisks, and with French and Italian styles visible in the windows and pilasters. And inside, where the State Rooms house remarkable collections of furniture, textiles, and Old Master paintings acquired over the centuries, Cecil’s Gothic-style Old Kitchen remains alongside the magnificent Renaissance staircase and Italianate fireplace in the Great Hall.

From Burghley’s inception as Cecil’s “prodigy house” to its remarkable renovation and the development of its parklands by Capability Brown in the eighteenth century, to the estate’s preservation efforts today, this is a rare and detailed look inside one of the gems in the British landscape. With sumptuous photography made specially for the book and imagery drawn from Burghley’s private archives, this book is a privileged tour of Burghley House and its remarkable history.

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Words by Francois Halard

The master photographer’s compelling images of his two most intimate passions: art and flowers.

“His photography has an innate capacity to evoke emotion and tell stories that linger in the mind long after the image is seen,” writes Dries Van Noten in the foreword to this two-volume series of images.

Long revered for his personal photography of the world’s most celebrated buildings and interiors, Halard strikes a new path with two new bodies of work. Confined to his house in Arles after a shoulder injury in early 2024, Halard began photographing the objects immediately surrounding him with his Polaroid camera. In turns traditional and abstract, the Flowers series is a captivating exploration of nature’s beauty. As beautifully described by fashion designer Dries Van Noten, “The Polaroid captures a fleeting moment, blossoming into a lasting memory, while the real flower, vibrant and alive, ultimately withers away, reminding us that beauty can be both preserved and ephemeral.”

In the second series, Art, Halard has enlarged a select number of his Polaroids, which he then worked on top with paint, wax, and other materials to give the final results a strong, layered sense of history and memory. Many of the images are made of ancient statuaries or details of Renaissance paintings from Italy and Greece—the tight crop of a marble head, or the folds of 15th-century drapery. “I am delving into the idea that antiquity can be modern,” Halard states in his interview with art curator Bice Curiger, “I like to start with a specific object to turn it into another, transitory object.” Halard’s transformation of the ephemeral into the permanent, in the case of his flowers; and the permanent into the ephemeral, in the case of his Classical-inspired artworks—give power and beauty to these compelling images.

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