IN PARTNERSHIP WITH RANGE ROVER
An exclusive interview with award-winning architect and judge on Home of The Year, Amanda Bone …
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Your favourite virtue I find it difficult to pinpoint just one – my three favourites are kindness, fairness, and thoughtfulness.
Your favourite qualities in a man/woman I feel uncomfortable making a distinction between men and women, as I believe the qualities are the same: open-mindedness, independent thinking, the courage to speak out and break away from societal norms, questioning assumptions, and being resilient.
Your chief characteristic Perseverance – not knowing when to call it a day.
Your favourite occupations Travelling, especially architectural trips to see buildings; visiting art exhibitions and galleries; athletics, but now strictly as a spectator; swimming; being outdoors; live music; cinema; window shopping in Paris.
Your idea of happiness Live music.
Your idea of misery The suffering and devastation in Gaza.
If not yourself, who would you be? I wouldn’t want to be anybody else, being myself is challenging enough. However, I would have loved to have run an 800m in under two minutes, so maybe Keely Hodgkinson for 1:55.78 – as if!
Your current state of mind Excited and optimistic, but aware that this shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Your favourite colour and flower Yellow. I’m not a fan of flowers because I’m generally allergic to them. I much prefer foliage. However, we have been slowly introducing flowers to our garden and I’m coming around to them – my current favourite is a shrub with a yellow flower called Euryops pectinatus, followed by an Eryngium, a natural blue thistle.
Most overrated virtue Obedience – it can stifle independent thinking and perpetuate unjust systems and conventions.
Which talent you would most like to possess To be able to sing.
Your favourite authors Claire Keegan, Colm Tóibín, Henry Miller, John McGahern, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison are some of my favourites. I also have a particular fascination with crime fiction and love Andrea Camilleri, James Ellroy, and Raymond Chandler.
Your favourite poets Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Louis MacNeice, Bertolt Brecht and Ted Hughes.
Your favourite heroes and heroines in fiction It’s difficult to narrow it down, but some of my favourite characters include Keith Talent in Martin Amis’s novel London Fields, Corrigan in Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin and Inspector Salvo Montalbano from Andrea Camilleri’s novels set in Sicily.
Your favourite artists Robert Motherwell and Anthony Gormley.
Your favourite musical artists and composers I have a very long list which includes: Oasis, Mark Lanegan, Paul Weller, Ian Curtis, Nick Drake, Warren Ellis, Lucinda Williams, Jacqueline du Pré and Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85.
The principal aspect of my personality Caring – about everything. I was stuck on this question, asked a group of close friends and this was their answer.
Your idea of good taste Unpretentious, restrained, subtle and aesthetically beautiful. The quality I look for in my surroundings Stillness, calmness, comfort, warmth, refinement, a great consideration of detail and the presence of nature. The country where I should like to live I’d love to live between France and Ireland.
Look to the road ahead with … Enthusiasm and hopefulness, coupled with a healthy degree of trepidation.