HAUTEVILLE HOUSE

A sa vociferous republican, Victor Hugo was forced to leave France in 1855, having fallen foul of Napoleon III and his Second Empire. The author sought political asylum on Guernsey and bought Hauteville House soon after he arrived on the island. Hauteville was the only home he ever owned and he lived there for 14 years, during which time he wrote some of his greatest works, including Les Misérables.

The house, a late- Georgian villa on three storeys, was an empty shell when Hugo moved in, and he had a clear vision of what he wanted to create from the outset. He scoured junk shops for heavy oak chests, tables and sideboards, and covered walls and ceilings with lavish tapestries, silks, carpets, picture frames and mirrors. Hugo had no qualms about using antiques in unconventional ways. Touring Hauteville, you might see a chair back turned upside down to create a window pelmet, or ceramics such as tureen lids and serving platters used as decorative inlays on walls and ceilings. In the Tapestry Room, he cut up Flemish verdure tapestries and used them to line the ceiling, window recesses and walls.

At the top of the house, Hugo created a sparsely furnished study modelled on London’s then-recently created Crystal Palace, which he called the Lookout. Unlike the heavy luxury of the lower rooms, this room was all about simplicity and light.

Hugo was not a collector in the conventional sense. He used his furnishings to create a visual story about himself and his situation: above the Dining Room doorway, he installed a deliberately ambiguous motto – Exilium vita est (‘Life is in exile’ or ‘Exile is life’). * ABOVE The dark stairwell leads visitors up to the second floor. Hung with Gobelin tapestries, it is dramatically lit from above by a circular skylight set in a gilded frame BELOW Hugo worked in the Lookout, a glazed and tiled room inspired by London’s Crystal Palace. He preferred to stand while he wrote, and he worked at a simple desk