A VERY STYLISH CHRISTMAS

Emma Thynn, the Marchioness of Bath, gives us a glimpse of her life during the festive period at Longleat, from hosting a family feast to welcoming celebrity guests

- INTERVIEW: JACK MALVERN

It is a wet, wintry day at Longleat and the Billiard Room is a hive of activity. Emma Thynn, the Marchioness of Bath, has opened the private apartment of her stately home at Longleat to HELLO! and is using this room - formerly the chapel of the house - to switch between designer dresses for a photoshoot that showcases spectacular rooms such as the State Dining Room and The Great Hall, before hauling a Christmas tree up the stone steps to her front door.

At one end of the room is a life-sized oil portrait of her sons, John, Viscount Weymouth, 11, and Lord Henry Thynn, who turns nine on 30 December, dressed in military-style Stella McCartney jackets with shorts and Wellington boots.

STUNNING SURROUNDS

There is a bar globe that resembles a glitter ball and a bookcase featuring copies of William Gladstone’s Studies on Homer. Outside the window are illuminated replicas of Tower Bridge and a London bus, because the Christmas extravaganza that pops up for the festive period is in full swing.

"Longleat is marvellous and uniquely unusual," Emma says in a break between being photographed on her rooftop to the sound of sea lions’ barks from the ornamental lake below, and another shot that involves her lying on a giant red velvet bow at the foot of a fourposter bed. “Everywhere you look, there’s something weirdly wonderful.”

This has been the world inhabited by Emma, 39, since she married Ceawlin Thynn, 8th Marquess of Bath, in 2013. Together, they run perhaps the most exuberant stately home in the world.

The 10,000-acre estate is full of superlatives: it houses the oldest drive-through safari park outside Africa, Britain’s longest yew maze and the largest private book collection in the UK.