The French confection
Interior designer Maria Duff fell instantly in love with her husband Jonathan. It took him, she jokes, 15 minutes to fall in love with her. That was 30 years ago, and ever since, they’ve created gorgeous homes together, including in the beautiful French c
“Every Saturday afternoon, we were given one of those four-sided aerogramme letters to write to our parents. The master dictated most of it”
Ever since they married, Jonathan Duff and his elegant Spanish wife Maria have moved many times, and we’re not just talking moving house.
They’ve lived in London, Brussels, Provence and Paris, and regarded each place as an adventure, once even moving to the south of France on the basis of a book they read.
They’ve spent 10 years — one of their longest stints in the same place — in their apartment on Rue d’Assas, a stone’s throw from the Jardin du Luxembourg, and a mere 20 minutes’ walk from Notre Dame Cathedral. Here, they’ve created a stunning home full of French antiques and Mediterranean colour.
All this moving was no hardship for either of them; Maria, an interior designer, loves doing up new homes, while Jonathan, whose family hails originally from Ulster, has been on the move since he was born. “My mother is from Down, and my father from Antrim. My father was an electrical engineer and worked abroad all my young life, and my mother and I moved with him. He worked in Ghana, The Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Namibia,” Jonathan recalls, adding, “Actually, by the age of eight, I was back in Northern Ireland, as my parents wanted me to have a good education, so I was sent off to boarding school.”
Jonathan was educated at the prestigious Campbell College; the chill winds of Belfast in the 1970s can only have been a sharp contrast to the sunnier climes he was used to, but Jonathan harbours no bitterness about the fact that he was a small boy thousands of miles from his parents. “I loved it. I was one of the few who wasn’t homesick. I think it was because I was an only child, and in Khartoum and the other places we lived, we would have had only a few expat friends, whereas at boarding school, I met all these boys with similar interests,” Jonathan recalls, adding with a laugh, “I remember there were very few phone calls, but every Saturday afternoon, we were given one of those four-sided aerogramme letters to write to our parents. The master dictated most of it — who we beat at rugby that week, etc, as if our parents cared.”
Jonathan left Campbell College when he was 18, and went to Cambridge to study economics and English literature, after which he headed to Paris for a year to learn French. On his return to England, he got a job in market research, which he loved. Soon after his return, he met Santander-born Maria, the eldest of three siblings, who having already studied at university in Madrid, was on track for a career in academia. “I went to England to do my PhD in philosophy,” she says. “One weekend, I went to a very glamorous house party in the Cotswolds, and I saw Jonathan. Before Jonathan even saw me, I knew we were going to be together forever. It was love at first sight for me, but I was worried, as I was surrounded by my beautiful blonde Swedish friends,” she explains rather dramatically, adding with a laugh, “It took Jonathan at least a quarter of an hour [to fall in love]. He told me later that my friends didn’t have a chance, as he prefers brunettes.”
The debonair Northerner and the