Decorating to a point of such detail, without making something feel overdone is certainly clever, but what is particularly canny about this flat is how full of things it is, yet—Tardis-like—it absorbs them without complaint. That’s not to say it’s cluttered—far from it. Daniel and Benedict have no truck with mess and muddle. Instead, theirs is a well-edited and, in Daniel’s words, “layered” selection of the objects of affection that have caught their gimlet eyes, from the serpentine radiator grilles he found at a fair in Parma to a painting by Francis Cyril Rose, a protegé of Gertrude Stein, that once belonged to Beaton and which Benedict unearthed, spattered in bird droppings, after it had been discarded in a Sussex barn.
As ever, though, the real lesson lies in buying things you love. Benedict mentions a piece of 19th-century Florentine silk he and Daniel bought together in the earliest days of their courtship “as a flirtation.” Today, the painted and embroidered piece makes up their bedroom blind, its gilt threads occasionally sparking in the half-light. It’s a reminder that, ultimately, for all its decorative considerations, this flat is “the story of us.” A triumph indeed.