This writing studio somehow comes as no suprise. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Dahl’s disturbing adult stories were written in this cramped, somewhat decrepit room. From The New York Times Magazine, 2006. Roald Dahl died in 1990; the house and studio are now a museum. Take a 3D tour of the shed here.

It was a surprise to see this little piece of Canadiana on Dahl’s door – apparently it was a longstanding family joke.

There’s something compelling about this photo of the bedroom of novelist Marguerite Duras in the house she bought in Neauphle, outside Paris, in the 1960s. The thin cot bed is so peculiar, like something she might have grown up with during her impoverished colonial childhood in French Indochina, now Vietnam. It’s a surprising bedroom for someone with such a life-long history of brilliant lovers. Duras loved to decorate, according to this account of her life and loves: Duras’ Paris “apartment at 5 rue Saint-Benoît was Marguerite’s universe, filled with her family photos, her bunches of dried flowers, her beautiful shining furniture, her broken stove, her shawls draped over the backs of shabby armchairs, loose parquet, the smell of rose petals. She was a talented DIY enthusiast and she entertained several times a week.” She was apparently a charming hostess as well as a radical agitator, such a nice combination. This photo’s origin is now forgotten, but it is most likely Nest Magazine. Oddly, I have an eerily similar carpet in the studio, in only marginally better shape. And what is that wrapped package under the bed?