This volume, the 11th in the Waddesdon series, opens with an account of the Destailleur family, Parisian architects of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whose designs are now to be found in the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin and in the Archives Nationales in France. The sources for Waddesdon Manor lie in the sixteenth century but its exterior decoration is drawn from the seventeenth. These sources are analysed and the building is set in the context of Destailleur's other great houses.

The second chapter studies the use and re-use of old French panelling from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries; the dismantling and re-use of it in the eighteenth century with examples drawn from Versailles; the trade and export of it at this time, its destruction during the Revolution, the market and organization of sales under the Empire, the return of interest under Louis-Philippe, the market under the Second Empire, the Rothschild family's interest in it and in particular Baron Ferdinand's.

The catalogue of Waddesdon's panelling follows, comprising more than half the book. The 385 individual elements are described and analysed, giving measurements, locations and provenance. With each panel there is a commentary on its relation to the series of which it forms part, as well as its period and history. Each series of panels is introduced by a fully documented section on the house for which it was carved.