The achievements and, in many cases, the infamy of Tite Street’s historical residents provide much of the subject matter for Devon Cox’s thorough chronicle of the street. But in a sense the story begins with architecture, since Chelsea’s reputation for flamboyance at the fin de siècle stemmed from those new buildings and interiors that swiftly became talking points well beyond the immediate spheres of their inhabitants. Here, in what had once been “a quaint village”, artists and aesthetes found space to commission houses in which they could live according to that sense of beauty they so venerated. Theirs was a domesticity done up with blue-and-white china, dado rails and peacock feathers – and it transfixed and titillated the wider public.