Transcript: A to BE Episode 20

Mimi Kwa (00:03):
People say life is a journey, not a destination. But how do you know you are on the right path?
Jo Stanley (00:10):
If only we could see the signs when they appear.
Mimi Kwa (00:13):
I’m Mimi Kwa.
Jo Stanley (00:14):
And I’m Jo Stanley.
Mimi Kwa (00:15):
And on A to Be, we speak to fascinating people about how they navigated their way to be here now, having profound impact on the world.
Jo Stanley (00:26):
We hope our conversations will help you reflect on everything you’ve been through to get here, the triumphs, challenges, and bumps along the road.
Mimi Kwa (00:35):
And if you haven’t already, find your own map to what matters.
Tim (00:41):
The Queen Mother had a fantastic lunch. Said, “You’ve got to meet this person, Mr. John.” And so Mr. John, as in Elton, ended up managing our company. So I think I was 22. One of my first jobs was designing Elton’s bedroom when he was married to Renate.
Jo Stanley (00:59):
Mimi, can you imagine being invited into Buckingham Palace and being asked to draw its rooms?
Mimi Kwa (01:04):
No. No.
Jo Stanley (01:05):
Or perhaps going to Hugh Grant’s place to give interior design advice?
Mimi Kwa (01:09):
No. But our guests today, extraordinary designers and artisans, Steve Holmes and Tim Gosling, have done both those things.
Jo Stanley (01:19):
Amazing.
Mimi Kwa (01:20):
Tim has spent his career designing for the rich and famous, and now he and Steve are lovingly and meticulously restoring an old French chateau, as you do, to its former glory.
Jo Stanley (01:32):
It is an absolute masterpiece and that is amazing in itself but their path to this incredible purpose of theirs, and I love that because I love old buildings, to really honor architecture like that is very special, but this purpose of theirs and meeting one another, it’s such a beautiful journey.
Mimi Kwa (01:52):
Their worlds revolve in a dazzling orbit of superstars. So many surprises in this conversation. It really took our breath away, didn’t it?
Jo Stanley (02:01):
It did. Have a listen.
Mimi Kwa (02:04):
Steve and Tim, we are so excited to have you join us today on A to Be because both of your stories are extraordinary. Both of you are extraordinary people doing something quite extraordinary to a building. Can you start by telling us a little bit about the chateau that you are restoring?
Tim (02:26):
Steve was the one that actually found it, and that was a wonderful mixture because he kept on saying, “I’d love to get my hands on restoring something,” and showed me through things that he’d found in England, and I kept on saying, “Why would you do that? Someone else has had a go badly at doing it.” We wanted somewhere where it had countryside and it was architecturally really, really extraordinary. Steve actually found the chateau online after two years of searching. It’s 57 rooms.
Mimi Kwa (02:52):
Oof. [inaudible 00:02:53]. Oh my goodness.
Tim (02:57):
The bizarre thing, it’s the only one we went to see. So we walked in and went, “Oh my God. This is just…”
Jo Stanley (03:03):
It was meant to be.
Tim (03:04):
Yeah, absolutely meant to be.
Jo Stanley (03:07):
How did you know that? What was the criteria for you? Aside from you knew you wanted, countryside and architecturally interesting, but was there an energy to the place?
Steven (03:16):
Yeah, I think so. I think it was just the more, as soon as we walked in, we just knew there was just something about it. It was almost as if time had stood still and it wanted someone to save it. I think it’s just something about these buildings. It’s almost if they’re alive and they talk to you. And I think it spoke to us, didn’t it? An incredible thing.
Tim (03:35):
We both looked at each other. I trusted him that he knew how to put a building like this back together, which without question is remarkable about Steve. And as we came out thinking, “We’re definitely going to do this. This is just too good,” our Tree Line Avenue meets another Tree Line Avenue which goes to the next door chateau, which I know sounds really bizarre, and as we stood there, I went, “Oh my God. I’ve stayed at that chateau before.” And he went, “No, you can’t have.” “No, no, I have. I’ve stayed there with Kip Forbes and Prince Charles and Camilla.” And he goes you can’t have.
Mimi Kwa (04:06):
LAUGHTER!!
Tim (04:08):
No, no, seriously. He went, “It’s just out of all the places in the world and in France that you could have chosen.” I’ve known Kip Forbes for 30 years and so the bizarre thing was that, while we were doing the starting point of our chateau, we were staying at their chateau to start with.
Mimi Kwa (04:28):
That is amazing. Amazing neighbors to have.
Tim (04:31):
And remarkable because Kip has an incredible, Malcolm Forbes bought quite a few properties, and it was about restoration of those incredible places, and theirs is Louis the 14th. That’s the first mansard roof created by Joseph Mansard, who did the blueprint for Versailles. So the symbiotic relationship between both our chateaus was just a starting point. Steve’s just so obsessed with history, and I think it was after about a month of having bought the chateau that we were lying on the sofa and he went, “I’ve just found Eisenhower at the chateau.” “What do you mean? Whose chateau?” He goes, “Ours.” And they were photographs.
Mimi Kwa (05:12):
It’s incredible, these things, these artifacts that you’ve uncovered in these 57 rooms, or has it been, under the building?
Steven (05:19):
We’d heard, there were stories for the locals that Eisenhower had been based at the chateau during World War Two, and we downplayed it and thought, “Yeah. They’re just stories and so forth.” But then we discovered afterwards these little bits and pieces, that there were photos that started coming out. And then we found an original speech that was be written by Eisenhower at the Chateau.
Mimi Kwa (05:39):
Is this under the floorboards or just in old furniture?
Tim (05:42):
During COVID, he actually found things stuffed in the heating vent. The stuff that he found was also from the Nazis.
Mimi Kwa (05:50):
Wow.
Tim (05:50):
It was the Nazi SS headquarters before the U.S. troops took over. The other thing is that, it’s about 15 minutes, 20 minutes away from the D- Day landings. Bearing in mind, we spent two years restoring, the first two years of the summers, and someone said, “God, it must be really good fun going to the beaches.” And I’m like, “What beaches?” And Steve said What beaches? They went, “Well, obviously, the D-Day landings,” which is why Eisenhower was at your chateau 20 minutes away.
Jo Stanley (06:21):
What is the history of the building? Can you give us a little nutshell?
Steven (06:24):
Its origins date back to 1140. There’s a chapel on the property that dates back to 1140. It was the Knights of the Templar. And so it’s had a very, very long history from that perspective. But from the time that we’ve had it, we’ve discovered that it was redesigned and rebuilt back in 1910. It was redesigned by the same architect who did the Ritz in Paris. So it has a very typical traditional Parisian style about it. It almost looks out of place in the Normandy countryside. But it was built by the Savory family. They had shares in [inaudible 00:06:57] department store. So money was pretty much no expense. I think internally it had 21 bedrooms.
Tim (07:03):
You keep on counting them and you recount because you just go…
Mimi Kwa (07:10):
And do you walk into rooms and think, “Oh, I forgot this room”?
Tim (07:10):
“Oh, I haven’t been in here for a year or two years.”
Mimi Kwa (07:10):
That’s amazing.
Tim (07:11):
The extraordinary thing, the thing that sets your head on fire, and we talked about building, shaping us, Churchill said that we create buildings and then our buildings shape us. This has 22 bathrooms.
Steven (07:24):
Exactly. So every bedroom has its own en suite bathroom.
Mimi Kwa (07:28):
And then some.
Tim (07:29):
Yeah. But 1910, that many bathrooms en suite, to have a private house of that scale, and even when we went to France in the 1970s and ’80s to find a bathroom, a flushing loo was just not a French thing,
Mimi Kwa (07:45):
Let alone dozens of them.
Tim (07:46):
Let alone with Mother of Pearl taps in chrome, and they’re all still there. None of them work.
Mimi Kwa (07:53):
Oh, the joy that it’s bringing you.
Tim (07:55):
And that’s the bit where we just go, “Oh my goodness, look at that. Look how beautiful.” This is the gem of it, is that nothing has been touched in this building.
Jo Stanley (08:04):
So what is it that draws you to restore a building like this?
Steven (08:08):
I think it’s more about the fact that we’ve become custodians of something very special, and we’re custodians of someone’s history and of a family history.
Tim (08:15):
It’s bigger than us.
Steven (08:17):
It’s become much bigger than us. And I think we almost have an obligation to look after this and keep it alive and nurture it, make sure it’s maintained.
Jo Stanley (08:27):
But why do you care about an old building like that? Some people would be just left cold. I mean, I love old buildings and, to me, I love that people like you exist and are custodians of them. But a lot of people just wouldn’t be moved by that. What is it in you?
Steven (08:41):
That’s a very good question.
Mimi Kwa (08:43):
Can I interject at that point? Because I’m just going to say, full disclosure, that I have known Steve forever. We used to be neighbors, and when we first met, Steve had renovated this beautiful single-fronted cottage in Peran, and he had literally crammed, I think what looked like all of Buckingham Palace into this, I think it was like one or two bedrooms.
Steven (09:09):
It was one and a half bedrooms.
Mimi Kwa (09:12):
One and a half bedroom cottage, and it was just breathtaking and extraordinary. And that’s something that has just been in you since when?
Steven (09:23):
Ever since my mother took me to Como when I was probably 9.
Jo Stanley (09:27):
Oh, Como House. My mum used to take us there all the time too.
Steven (09:30):
Yeah. I think it’s a passion that grew over time.
Mimi Kwa (09:35):
Because lots of people go to Como House, but they don’t walk out a designer and with a love of interiors the way that you do, and historic interiors.
Steven (09:45):
Yeah. I think for me I’ve always had a passion for Melbourne from an historical perspective, and I guess it grew from there and onwards.
Tim (09:53):
It is just amazing to watch though. Steve has this incredible ability to know how to put something back together. That is a gift.
Jo Stanley (10:04):
Your skill is incredibly beautiful interior design.
Tim (10:10):
But that’s because I have a very strong ability to hold an image in my head. And most people find it very difficult to understand how to articulate that image. But when I start sketching, that ability to, A, listen to the words, but also there’s a sense to be able to read that image and put it down on paper and they go, “Yeah, that’s exactly it.”
Mimi Kwa (10:32):
When did you discover that gift of art and being able to translate what you were imagining or what you were seeing in front of you onto the page?
Tim (10:41):
At eight. I know it’s just bizarre and weird.
Mimi Kwa (10:44):
What happened?
Tim (10:45):
I just remember drawing St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is a bit weird at eight. And when I look back on this, which is even stranger, I found some sketchbooks that I thought were my own and St. Paul’s Cathedral and the exact same architectural style, and it was 1919 and it was my grandfather who I never met.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:11:04]
Mimi (11:06):
Wow!
Tim (11:08):
Who drew exactly like me.
Mimi (11:10):
So, genetically you have this in you.
Tim (11:13):
And even weirder is that my father was the one that discovered DNA genetics. So, he and Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin took the first … My father took the first photograph of the double helix in 1952.
Jo Stanley (11:28):
Mimi and I are just losing our minds, because in a previous episode …In a previous episode we talked about Rosalind and … Do you remember?
Mimi (11:38):
Yes.
Tim (11:38):
No way!
Mimi Kwa (11:38):
Wow! The interconnectivity of all of it. But your family’s very even more evident now that you’ve told us that story. Very scientific, rule-based background. But then also your grandfather’s ability to-
Tim (11:55):
Draw and sketch-
Mimi (11:55):
To draw sketch. Did your family embrace your artistic ability?
Tim (12:00):
No. My father tried to do exactly what his father tried to do. So, his grandfather said, “I want you to do arts,” and my father said, “I want to do science,” And they just stopped speaking with each other. And my father said, “You’re maths blind. You need to do extra physics.” And I went, “I don’t understand how to do this stuff.”
Mimi (12:20):
So, he hadn’t learned from history. He then just went in-
Tim (12:20):
My mother was stronger than him at that point and said, “Right. No. He’s going to do art.” But he said, “You’re going to be sad and miserable.” Yeah. And I think it’s interesting, because I think Steve’s background, where his mother was an architect and she was incredibly instrumental in a lot of the groundbreaking female roles of architecture in Australia … And you’ve also got my father’s relationship with Rosalind Franklin, where she’s one of the first female scientists. And my father was an outsider as well, which is why they got on so well. On the first day she arrived at London University, was told, “By the way, we’re going for lunch and you can’t come with us. You’re a woman.” And so my father just sat there and talked to her. And he was not public school, so therefore they bonded. But, that’s why I think it’s really interesting where Steve’s father was the one that built all their houses in Australia. So, this skill set of creation for real and drawing and this interconnected, groundbreaking, strong women as part of that reflection is really interesting.
Jo Stanley (13:22):
And how did you two meet?
Steven (13:24):
So, my background is more in business development marketing for companies. So, I take on companies that are failing, get them up and running again. And so, one of the businesses that I took on was an interior design company. Sorry, company that makes furniture. And Tim was one of our clients.
Tim (13:40):
We went for dinner after a book launch and it was halfway through … I took him to my club, which is absolutely fantastic. Created in 1824, nothing’s changed. Everyone’s just as old as when they started. And it’s not the place you take anyone on a day ever. And halfway through dinner I said, “Can I just ask a technical question about you? Are you, do you, are you on my side of the fence?
Mimi (14:05):
Oh, wow!
Tim (14:08):
Because I had no idea he was gay. And then it went from a business dinner to a date. We laugh a lot by the fact that our design sensibilities are separated by about 40 years where I’m regency and he’s more Victorian. And we just argue about, there’s points of detail quite a lot.
Mimi (14:29):
You can’t see this listeners, but the eye roll.
Jo Stanley (14:34):
I mean, what a hilarious thing to argue about. My husband and I argue about that all the time. Design sensibilities are so different-
Mimi (14:40):
Husband and I. You are going to be husband and husband. You’re getting married. Congratulations.
Tim (14:45):
Thank you.
Steven (14:46):
Yes.
Mimi (14:47):
In a very special place. Tell us about that.
Steven (14:50):
So, we’re getting married next year at St. Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, where I think we’re the second couple to-
Tim (14:59):
Second gay wedding.
Steven (15:00):
Second gay wedding. Thank you.
Mimi (15:02):
Wow!
Steven (15:02):
Very fortunate.
Tim (15:03):
And bizarrely we’re doing the reception afterwards at the Athenaeum Club where we went on our first date, which is a nice rounding of the-
Jo Stanley (15:11):
Perfect.
Tim (15:12):
of the whole.
Jo Stanley (15:15):
It is perfect. I want to ask you about the significance of the environments that we live in. And we’ve touched on this surface level. But, I love beautiful buildings and beautiful environments and I’m not skilled or talented at creating them particularly. I’m not a natural interior designer. But, I think too, I didn’t grow up in a house that was particularly lovely. It was a ’70s/’80s house, very low socioeconomic family. And that really impacted, I guess, the person I am. I didn’t love the environment that I grew up in. And I wonder how we can make beautiful environments, even if the place that we have found ourselves in isn’t particularly beautiful? And do you think it impacts who you are as a person?
Tim (15:58):
I think some of it’s about confidence. So, if you come from an environment where you grow up, where you don’t relate to what you’re seeing or you don’t feel confident about it, then I think it’s quite difficult to then being able to expand that as you go through and understand how to change or sculpt it to fit you. I think our education system in England’s slightly skewed in that we went … All my brothers, I have three brothers, we all went to boarding school. So, you get shipped off at the age of eight and suddenly you talk about environment where you are an environment in which it’s completely your home, but it’s a boarding school, where it’s some of it’s really 15th century, some of it goes into early 19th century. You also see your things when you go back for holidays at your own home. And I think also the fact that my father was that crazy scientist. We laugh a lot, because he also decided as an experiment that we went to nudist colonies from the age of eight to when I was about 25.
Mimi (17:08):
Wow! This just keeps getting more and more extraordinary.
Tim (17:14):
And I think that you talk about how’s that environment shaped you? Well, you’ve got Henley Regatta where you have the formality of wearing suits, ties and you’re not allowed to take your jacket off. And then the next week you will be on the same beach down in the South of France that the housemaster that you were just talking to is there. But, you’re-
Mimi (17:32):
You’re not allowed to have your jacket on.
Tim (17:33):
No. You’re not have anything on. And my father is discussing the rowing scores with the family and you’re completely naked with all my cousins. And then you cut then to later on in life, where I grew up and I became partners with David Linley. He was Princess Margaret’s son, so his granny was the Queen Mother and his aunt was the Queen. And you’ve got that moment when I’d come back from the nudist colonies and I’d go, “This is us water-skiing naked with Germans. And this is Balmoral. And you’d go, “God. That’s really … So-
Mimi (18:08):
The little slide show.
Tim (18:10):
But, the extremes of those environments, where at one point you’ve got the royal family and their ability to communicate with each other and how they are interacting, and how my family are and also how Steve’s family is. The environments that you grew up … It’s been really fascinating for me to see Melbourne, because to understand where Steve grew up and how that has shaped him, for me has just been the biggest eye-opener in the last three days.
Mimi (18:40):
Yeah. And you said before, you’ve only been here three days, but you feel like you’ve been here two weeks, because you’ve been everywhere. You’ve been taking all of this information about Steve’s background and upbringing, which Steve to your A to B journey as well. How do you think that your childhood, having a strong mother figure, but then other trials and tribulations along the way, really shaped you to a point that you decided that Australia was maybe too small for your aspirations or ambitions?
Steven (19:13):
It’s interesting. I reached the point when I was about 27 years old where I suddenly realized that my mother wasn’t … Because I’ve always had a very close relationship with my mother. And that I reached a point where I realized that one day my mother isn’t going to be in my life and I’m going to have to start standing on my own two feet, to be my own person. And it may be to a certain degree, develop a bit of confidence to take a step away from my parents, if that makes sense? So, moving to London was one of the best things I could have done from that perspective. I think if anything, it probably just having that separation. I know it sounds awful, but it’s character building. And it’s one of the best things that could have happened in the process. But. If anything, my parents actually followed me over there. They bought a house over there and
Mimi (19:54):
So, not a lot of independence?
Steven (19:58):
No. On the contrary. I think it’s important for … Everyone reaches a point in their life where they start to realist that they have to stand on their own two feet and be their own person and develop that confidence to be able to grab life by the horns and make something of themselves in the process.
Mimi (20:22):
Now, somewhere in between your move to London and then staying put there for as long as you have, you sent me a message or we caught up back here in Australia. And I will never forget, you told me a story about Hugh Grant.
Steven (20:39):
I can’t believe that you can remember that.
Mimi (20:40):
Oh, my gosh! I will never forget it. But, I want you to tell it in your own words, because I was like, “What is this life that Steve is stepping into?” And we want to hear more Tim in a minute from your extraordinary experiences too.
Steven (20:56):
So, when I first moved to London, one of the very first jobs I took on was working for an interior design firm. So, I worked as an interior designer and my boss at the time thought it would be a practical joke to send me on a client visit. So, I’m having to run through a proposal with the client and I kept thinking, “I think I know you from somewhere.” And I finally got the courage to say to him, “Look, I think I might’ve gone to school with you. And this guy said to me, “No. No. I don’t think so.” And that was funny. I discovered it was Hugh Grant and I thought-
Mimi (21:35):
And you were putting up his curtains or doing the interior design?
Steven (21:38):
Exactly. I just said to him, “Look, don’t bother opening the door. I’ll just crawl out under the crack.” It was so embarrassing, but they thought it was hilarious. Went back into work afterwards and told him what happened and they thought it was, yeah-
Mimi (21:48):
And can we now talk about the Queen? Because your involvement in interior design with the royal family or for the royal family sounds fascinating. And I’d love to hear more about it. Where do you begin?
Tim (22:02):
Where do you begin. When you look back on When you look back on life, I think there are moments where you realize, or you catch yourself realizing, the privileges that you’ve been able to see. And I think sometimes one of the biggest moments when I realized that, having just been to St. Petersburg and just seeing all the palaces as the museums, and we then had dinner with the Queen Mother. I was talking about how incredibly impressive it was, and she said, “Well, obviously, I knew the tsar personally.”
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:22:04]
Mimi (22:34):
Obviously.
Tim (22:35):
And I go, “Yes, obviously, Your Majesty. Gosh, that must’ve been extraordinary.” And she said, “Yes. No, in fact, he was a bit scary, but he gave me my first piece of Fabergé. And I went, “Goodness.” She said, “Would you like to see it?” I went, “Absolutely.” And we trotted off to see her Fabergé collection. And it was just that moment where you’re being told something about a world which has completely disappeared by someone that was the cornerstone of catching all of that. And that, for me, has been so incredibly important because someone who knew Winston Churchill well, someone who’s seen these changes that have happened, these global changes in our world-
Mimi Kwa (23:19):
That have affected all of humanity.
Tim (23:19):
I mean, though, we talk about buildings and what do you feel from them? Someone who’s actually telling you what it was like to be in these places where we now have them as museums around the world, but she knows them as palaces, and how that felt and what it was like to witness that, these things are really fascinating. It’s like when you ask yourself, “Who would you like to sit next to at dinner in history?” And someone to be able to tell you what it was like to be there at that moment. So I think those things have been… That’s been a really big privilege. And talking to members of the royal family about their experiences, or even the Queen or whatever part of it it was about these buildings which are so iconic, I find that really remarkable. I was lucky enough to sketch all the private rooms at Buckingham Palace, and you sit there and absorb the idea and the design elements to it and what’s moved from where and how that happened.
Jo Stanley (24:16):
Does it feel like a home for them?
Tim (24:18):
It did much more for the Queen than it does for King Charles because it’s a big place. And it always makes me laugh that Buckingham Palace, the first monarch to actually live there was Queen Victoria. Although it was designed for George IV, he never moved in. And the moment that it was given to Queen Victoria, she said, “It’s just not big enough for me.” So they created the entire front, which is basically all of the front rooms are the pieces left over from Brighton Pavilion. So she was made to reuse it because the government had spent so much money on George IV’s Brighton Pavilion and enlarged it even further just for her staff. So it’s a big place.
Mimi Kwa (25:00):
And it sounds like with all of the extraordinary influential people that you’ve met throughout your journey, Tim, and coming from such an extraordinary family too, that you just regard people as people, and what you really are in awe of is the majesty of the art and the artifacts that you find yourself privileged enough to be in amongst.
Tim (25:21):
Yeah. And people. I mean, when I first started very quickly being partners with David Linley and Ruth, myself, the Queen Mother, at a fantastic lunch, said that we really need the help of someone who knew what they were doing with all the different other aspects that a business needs and, “You’ve got to meet this person, Mr. John.” And so Mr. John, as in Elton, ended up managing our company with John Reid. So I think I was 22. So one of my first jobs was designing Elton’s bedroom when he was married to Renate. I hadn’t even come out at that point, so that was quite fantastically complicated. And then when Elton really came out and-
Mimi Kwa (26:07):
Did that give you confidence?
Tim (26:09):
Well, I then said, “God, I think I might be gay.” And my father said, “It’s that Mr. John. He never called him Elton.
Mimi Kwa (26:13):
He’s made you gay.
Mimi (26:14):
I think Mr. John’s responsible for a lot of people-
Tim (26:20):
A lot, I think.
Jo Stanley (26:21):
… thinking that they might be gay.
Tim (26:23):
I know. And I went, “Gosh. It’s a totally different thing.” Yeah, yeah.
Jo Stanley (26:26):
Yes. How wonderful, though, that he gave you that confidence.
Tim (26:30):
Yeah, and the first time I went to America was with Elton and David, and we went for the opening of the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City where Donald Trump… So that’s the first time I met him, the insanity of what that was about. And I thought, “Gosh, every vehicle I get into has a bar in it,” so they must have ordered it.
Mimi (26:49):
Oh my goodness.
Tim (26:50):
They all drink. And then we helicoptered to New York, and that was owned by… So we went to stay at The Plaza, which was owned by Donald’s wife at the time, Ivana. And it’s just this mad world where you’re trying to absorb all the different cultural details and you’re looking at stuff and I’m sketching. It’s this madness of these vehicles and people. Yeah. So you look back on life sometimes and it is an interesting journey. Steve and I laugh a lot about the people that we see on television or when you actually know who they are. Or you see a lot of films now done of the world that we used to live in the ’80s and ’90s, and now you’ve got actors playing the people you know. So it is also looking at Photograph 51 where you’ve got an actor playing my father, or you’ve got people that are… It’s part of history now.
Mimi (27:44):
How do you feel about this, Steve, that for a start, you kind of entered this amazing, extraordinary world on your own, but now you’ve kind of stepped through another portal being with Tim? Is this kind of extraordinary to you or is it something that’s happened so gradually that nothing surprises you anymore?
Steven (28:03):
Nothing surprises me anymore. Life is never a dull moment, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I remember we were sitting at a table one night with Joan Collins and Brian May, and having conversations about hedgehogs and the hedgehog farm that Brian May has set up with his wife.
Mimi Kwa (28:22):
Of course.
Mimi (28:23):
That’s almost more extraordinary than who you were sitting with, just the concept of that farm.
Steven (28:33):
But this is life. At the end of the day, we’re all the same. It’s a very, very interesting life that we’ve… Well, with Tim and so forth. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tim (28:42):
It’s never dull.
Jo Stanley (28:43):
But I want to ask, because you speak about these incredibly famous people, who to those who live a world where you don’t mix with famous people, that sounds really exciting, and it also sounds thrilling to hear the stories, but at the end of the day, firstly, yes, they are just people, but secondly-
Mimi (29:01):
And you can imagine them with their clothes off because you’ve been to enough nude sketches.
Mimi Kwa (29:06):
Yeah, that’s correct.
Tim (29:06):
Yeah, it’s a lot better.
Jo Stanley (29:07):
But what I think is really important to note too is just because they’re living those lives doesn’t mean they’re happy. Some are perhaps deeply unhappy if they haven’t found their purpose, if they haven’t found the thing that actually makes them have a drive and have a reason for doing what they do, don’t you think?
Tim (29:25):
Yeah. I think being happy is a really critical thing in life and what fulfills that happiness and what makes a home a home. We talk a lot about the pace of life and trying to… Steve’s really good at being able to just give me perspective on things like that sometimes and says, “Just let’s have some time for us,” because otherwise it’s very easy in the world that we live in to say yes to everything because it’s so extraordinary, and that can just swamp you sometimes. You can just have no space for just recharging.
Mimi (29:59):
I just love how you’ve been documenting your whole journey on Instagram.
Tim (30:04):
That was an accident. We did it just so that our family knew we were alive. And that’s been a surprise, actually, really big surprise that we’ve got 30,000.
Mimi (30:14):
Tens of thousands of people. Yeah.
Tim (30:17):
It was just done for us to share that journey. And I think to restore this chateau under our own steam, the most important thing is we want people. We want it to be alive. It needs people, it needs energy.
Mimi Kwa (30:30):
So what is the purpose of the chateau? What will it be used for other than perhaps filling your life’s purpose?
Steven (30:37):
It’s interesting because we don’t really… For us, I think, well, foremost, it’s a family home and for friends and family to come and stay.
Tim (30:46):
The plan is that there is no plan. And that’s-
Mimi (30:49):
Is it near completion?
Tim (30:50):
Oh my God. It’s so far away from it. I think we’ve only done about 20%, 20 or 30% of it.
Mimi (30:56):
Wow.
Tim (30:56):
It’s 57 rooms. And-
Mimi (30:57):
So this is going to keep you occupied for a very long time.
Tim (30:59):
For the rest of our lives. This is the gem of it is that nothing has been touched in this building. No one’s painted a wall, no one’s knocked down a wall, no one’s touched any of the electrics. No. So it’s a time capsule. And suddenly the family had been so generous, giving us back so much of the stuff. And after about, I think it was two or three years that we were.. So we’ve only had it for six years. So it’s pretty new. My clients go, “Gosh, I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be finished in two years?” And sometimes you can run so fast that you miss the journey. And the journey about restoring the chateau and the excitement where Steve and I choose these things together… One room isn’t just, “Let’s do it all quickly and get it all up.” This is about really considering the layers of what’s going to go in that. And that takes about a room a year.
(31:56):
It’s shaping us because it’s teaching us so much. And the family suddenly went, “Gosh, you’re doing such an amazing job and you care so much. Do you want the furniture back?” And we went, “Sorry, just run that translation.” [foreign language 00:32:11]. And he suddenly discovered that the furniture was taken out in the 1950s and put into a barn just at the top by the waterfall, and it’s sat there ever since.
Mimi Kwa (32:24):
Wow.
Tim (32:24):
And bit by bit-
Mimi (32:26):
And they know that you are going to restore and look after it all.
Tim (32:29):
Well, we are. So all of it’s-
Mimi (32:31):
I mean, who better to give it to?
Tim (32:31):
… come back to the chateau. And-
Steven (32:32):
It’s not just about the furniture. Also, there is literally boxes upon boxes of letters. So you have husband and wife, Madam Savrie and Monsieur Savrie, and he was actually off on his journeys, traveling and so forth. She’d be writing to him. He’d be writing to her. So there’s all these letters from 1910 to the-
Tim (32:50):
’50s.
Steven (32:50):
… 1950s.
Mimi (32:50):
Wow.
Steven (32:52):
And just correspondence between them both. So there’s love letters and there’s all sorts of bits and pieces –
Jo Stanley (32:58):
Are they beautiful?
Tim (32:58):
They are so beautiful.
Steven (32:58):
Yeah.
Jo Stanley (32:58):
Were they in love?
Tim (32:58):
Yes.
Steven (32:58):
They were very much in love.
Tim (33:00):
Massively.
Steven (33:01):
Yep.
Jo Stanley (33:01):
Oh, my heart.
Tim (33:02):
Literally, it’s the most-
Mimi (33:03):
It’s-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:33:04]
Steven (33:03):
… much in love.
Tim (33:03):
Massively.
Mimi Kwa (33:03):
Oh, my heart.
Jo (33:03):
That’s beautiful.
Tim (33:03):
Literally, it’s the most… You dive through this and it’s a complete love story. They have three children, all boys. It’s a slice through the massive change in France where I’m not sure that England understands what it was like, because we were never occupied. And I don’t think Australia understands what it was like, because-
Jo (33:21):
Oh, there’s no way we could understand.
Tim (33:22):
… one moment, you limp through the First World War, which is happening about an hour away from you, so it’s not on your doorstep. And the beginning of the Second World War, suddenly you are in the most wonderful life, and the Nazis roll down the drive and go, “Right, we’re taking over your chateau.” Suddenly the paintings get taken away, that moment of suddenly being occupied and you are trying to keep yourself together. So, we’re not quite sure of the timing about what happened, but the Nazis found a parachute that was buried on the estate, a British parachute, I think, wasn’t it, Steve? And they held him responsible. And that evening, they dragged the children out of the cinema and sent them to a concentration camp with him. And sadly, he didn’t survive that. His wife had fled to the next door chateau, which was under guise of the Red Cross, so not safe, but in a situation in which she could do some negotiations and they managed to get the children out. And we met one of the sons. So he was 96. And-
Mimi Kwa (34:30):
So these stories, I’m so fascinated with this concept that you raised earlier, Steve, around the chateau spoke to you both. It somehow energetically connected with you and it was giving you a message that it wanted to tell you its stories.
Tim (34:51):
Yeah.
Steven (34:52):
Yeah, absolutely. It’s almost as if it… Again, these buildings speak to you and you feel it, don’t you?
Jo (34:59):
Do you feel ghosts in there?
Steven (35:01):
Absolutely. Yeah, we’ve had a few little strange things happen.
Mimi Kwa (35:04):
Oh, like what?
Tim (35:06):
Yeah. It’s bizarre, because I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it. It might come from a scientific background with my father where everything has to be proven. On the servants floor, there is a young girl, a member of staff that you can just catch out of the corner of your eyes, bottom of a servant staircase going up to the library.
Mimi Kwa (35:27):
What do you mean catch her out of the corner of your? Like you just see her skirt?
Tim (35:31):
You just see her and you just just go, “Is there anyone else here?” And it’s down a long… I call it the corridor of fear, because I will not… When the fuse box is-
Mimi Kwa (35:41):
The corridor of fear. Oh my goodness.
Jo (35:43):
That’s catchy.
Tim (35:44):
… I will not go down there on my own. Yeah. And then Steve was there-
Mimi Kwa (35:48):
Oh my gosh. There’ll be queues out the gate.
Tim (35:50):
Steve was there one evening on his own.
Steven (35:53):
You feel something. I was working in what’s going to be the library, trying to light the fire, finally managed to get the fire lit. Coming off the library, there’s a staircase that takes you down to the servant’s quarters-
Tim (36:05):
Where she is. That’s where she’s always seen.
Steven (36:08):
So, I walk down the staircase, just to make sure that everything’s okay. I could hear something downstairs and I thought, “Okay, I’ll just take a quick look.” And I’m on my own, 57 rooms, and I don’t feel scared at all. And I just walked down the staircase and everything was fine. Walked back up the staircase, the door was closed, locked. So I thought, “Okay, maybe the next door neighbor’s playing a practical joke on me,” because our next door neighbor has the keys to the chateau and so forth and whenever we’re not there… So I then walk out the main servant staircase back up, again, thinking that she’s obviously upstairs and walking around. And sure enough, the front door is locked, walked back into the library, into the room that I was in, and the door is actually locked from the inside. It’s as if someone’s-
Tim (36:47):
It’s bolted.
Steven (36:48):
Yeah, bolted closed.
Jo (36:49):
What?
Tim (36:49):
Completely and utterly-
Jo (36:49):
What?
Mimi Kwa (36:49):
What?
Tim (36:52):
… bolted shut from the other side.
Steven (36:53):
And then we had… This summer, I was sitting in the dining room just having a conversation with a couple of friends and I was just making a little paper airplane out of a piece of paper I found and left it on the table, didn’t think anything of it. And it, probably about, what about, six weeks afterwards, our security cameras went off and a little paper airplane went past the cameras at probably about 9, 10 o’clock at night and set the cameras off. Now, our next door neighbors saw this as well, so they’ve gone over there to investigate. My paper airplane had literally gone across the dining room and-
Mimi Kwa (37:32):
Wow, so you witnessed that on the video from the security footage?
Steven (37:41):
we witnessed it.
Jo (37:41):
Why do you think they’re trying to communicate to you? That they’re there?
Mimi Kwa (37:41):
Or is it the house? Is it the house communicating, or is it the former occupants of the house?
Tim (37:45):
No. We talk a lot about this when we’re there, because I think everyone talks about the spaces and what you’re going to do and how you’re… Our chateau is very vocal about what she wants as a building and as a collective group of energies within the spaces. I know that sounds incredibly weird, but when we fight against something and we try to keep things where we… The children’s children now choose their wallpapers for their bedrooms, so that we still have a continuity of the people who grew up in the chateau.
Mimi Kwa (38:18):
Oh, the actual people? The family?
Tim (38:20):
The family are still really involved.
Mimi Kwa (38:22):
Wow.
Jo (38:22):
Oh, wow.
Mimi Kwa (38:22):
That’s so lovely.
Tim (38:24):
And Maude, so Maude and Brigit grew up at the chateau-
Steven (38:28):
We call her auntie Maude.
Tim (38:29):
All these stories about how they used to… And the formality in which the chateau was run, had 12 live-in staff. So each of the bedrooms upstairs look out across the front drive and each one has their own bedroom. And you just get to know how the chateau then starts speaking about what it wants and how she wants to be looked after. And we do have a tough time sometimes when we lock up and go, because-
Mimi Kwa (38:57):
Or maybe the chateau will lock up for you.
Tim (38:59):
No, no, no. But she’s not happy about the fact that we’re leaving.
Steven (39:02):
You feel it.
Mimi Kwa (39:02):
Really?
Steven (39:02):
Yeah. Yeah. And they have-
Mimi Kwa (39:06):
That’s so interesting.
Jo (39:07):
So, it’s literally your life’s work. And to me, that is a lesson that I’m picking up from this, is that how wonderful to have a life’s work. Not everybody does. What lessons have you learned from this house?
Steven (39:22):
They say that you have to be a very strong person to take on a restoration or a renovation of that size and scale. I would say that, if anything, it’s probably brought us both closer together and we’re creating something together.
Tim (39:37):
I think there are moments in my life when I’ve realized that, in a landscape you can look back and you can see the journey. And I think as you get older, you are able to turn around a bit more and you can see the path that you have, because the path is longer and you are, to a certain extent, able to understand what’s happened. I spend a lot of my life thinking about the understanding of legacy, and I think that the collection that we are restoring with the chateau needs to have a life after us. And I have no idea how that would happen. But the legacy of being given all of this stuff is too good to just let it just disappear. I would love to have a relation or someone within Steve’s family or my nephews, where they go, “Gosh, this is really interesting,” because we both put collections together from around the world and those could just go to auction at some point and they’ll disappear. And that will be a real shame, because they support the chateau and they support the things that we’ve learned and they’re all kept in one place. So, we are able to teach people through our shared life experience.
Steven (40:54):
That’s kind of… Well, that’s pretty much where I would touch on. I would say that, let’s face it, life is too short and for me, it’s about cramming in as much as possible, about surrounding yourself with people and things that, or opportunities and creating opportunities and making something happen and building a legacy. I think the fact that we are building this together and leaving it, well, hopefully to people that appreciate it.
Mimi Kwa (41:25):
That’s beautiful. Thank you both. That is such a gorgeous, I know I said it before, but it’s such a gorgeous love story.
Jo (41:31):
It really is a love story for that building and for the people that live there, the ghosts who live on in what you are creating that environment and the love story between the two of you. Thank you.
Steven (41:43):
Thank you.
Tim (41:44):
Thank you both. It’s been wonderful.
Jo (41:49):
Thank you for listening. We love you joining us for our A to Be Chats.
Mimi Kwa (41:53):
Yes, we do. Please see our show notes for our acknowledgement of country and all the people who help us put this podcast together, as well as interesting links to our guest’s work and other references we’ve mentioned.
Jo (42:05):
We’re Jo…
Mimi Kwa (42:06):
And Mimi from A to Be. Rate, follow and get in touch on our website.
Jo (42:11):
And let us know who’s A To Be you’d like to find out about.
Mimi Kwa (42:15):
We can’t wait for you to hear our next conversation.