"Between 1710 and 1770, the Rococo style should, in the normal course of events, have been Britain's prevailing decorative style, at once inventive, ornate, elegant and playful. This is the first book to describe and explain its oddly frustrated course in England and, in vivid contrast, its brilliant flourishing in Ireland. Architectural historians have tried to make the best of the Palladian Revival that occurred after 1714. But in fact Palladianism was a cultural disaster, a retrograde step imposed upon a chauvinistic ruling class which left England dependent for the internal decor of its aristocratic houses on memories of ruined Roman baths or the improvisations of itinerant Italo-Swiss stucco workers. England's eventual response to the decorative failings of Palladianism was the 'Gothick'. Ireland, more sophisticated in the technical education of its craftsmen and artists, not only devised its own subtle 'insular' Rococo, but exported this mode successfully to the West of England in a gesture of cultural colonialism."--Jacket.