The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces & fill them with objects & friends, they shape our lives & become the backdrop to our sense of self. One day, the houses will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories & the memories they contained will remain. In this dazzling work of imaginative re-construction, Edward Hollis takes us to the sites of five great spaces now lost to history & pieces together the fragments he finds there to re-create their vanished chambers. From Rome`s Palatine to the old Palace of Westminster & the Petit Trianon at Versailles, & from the sets of the MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal Palace & his own grandmother`s sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places & the people who, for a short time, made them their home.