Creative Polymath...

He is obsessed with the 18th century, but it's the English Revolution, rather than the radical fury of the French, that absorbs him. "The British have a hybrid vigor," he explains. "They are best as mongrels. What I find wonderful about our revolution was we still understood the idea of 'extreme example.' We may not have been the greatest creators in Europe, but we were brilliant editors of all the influences, bringing the functional and the beautiful back from Italy to our gardens and interiors, adding our own practical dynamic to French clothes." In Kinmonth's work, this sensibility translates as physicality—a you-are-there immediacy that is almost cinematic in its appeal to the senses.