Romantic French Homes by Lanie Goodman, published by CICO Books (£35). Photography by Simon Brown © CICO Books
 
How do you capture or even describe the depth of feeling in French interiors? The stories of fourteen homes with photographs of personal mise-en-scènes express what is difficult to define: romance. 
 
From the intimacy shared between current owners and their properties past, be it spaces that recreate the magic of memories or reimagine what past centuries offer, author Lanie Goodman takes us on a tour of 'livable works of art.' 
 
Romance brought to life; elegant yet lived-in details coupled with insights about notable people that lived in the houses. The book opens with Château de la Batellerie, formerly owned by French automaker Louis Renault, for whom it was love and sold at first sight as he glimpsed the Anglo-Norman stone manor house from the Seine in his 60-foot yacht. 
 
From tinkering with machines and engines in his family's garden shed as a child-Renault installed electricity in their home when no one else had it-to his custom-made workroom pictured. It features meticulously stencilled tool cabinets and a drop-leaf crystal chandelier preserved by the current owner, David Salamone. Appropriately a retired stunt driver and car enthusuast, it took Salamone two years to rescue the property, abandoned for almost 40 years. Renault disliked waste. He made a cider brewery to make the most of the apple orchard and started a bee farm to produce honey, so no doubt he would approve that the home is being used and enjoyed once again. 
 
Whether your page falls on an apartment in Paris or a bastide (country house) in Provence, the book is full of design ideas that could work in all kinds of homes. Perhaps taking inspiration from a grand French country house for my flat in London is a chance to practise the art of ‘insouciance for rules’ that the author characterises in the decor of French homes. 
 
The kitchens throughout the book are captivating, with designs that draw the eye. The cheery country one pictured shows a locally found antique farm table given a Verona marble tabletop with chairs from a brocante painted blue. 
 
Princess Grace of Monaco brings new romance to pink belladonnas, reading that they were among flowers she found unpretentious in the “secretive and special” cloister-like garden of L’Aumonerie, a home in the hilltop village Roquebrune, just above Monaco. 
 
L’Aumonerie (Alms house), once attached to Sainte-Marguerite church by an eleventh-century hallway, housed monks before being pieced together over the past half-century. A succession of owners broke through the city walls and consolidated the disparate small neighbouring apartments into the home it is today. 
 
Like Princess Grace of Monaco, the current owner fondly remembers the garden. His mother owned a house in the village and was friends with Fashion photographer Henry Clarke and decorator Raymond Poteau, the couple that owned and created the home during the golden age of the Côte d’Azur.
 
The owner, interior designer John-Mark Horton preserved the seventeenth-century orange walled loggia pictured, where the furniture and many of the plants date to the 1950s. His favourite part of the house - exactly as it was when Poteau and Clarke entertained guests like Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn.