In August 2011, Libyan rebels broke into the huge Gaddafi family compound in Tripoli. They looted it and trashed it and then invited the world’s media in to see it: the secret luxury, the extravagance, the decadent western brands. Journalists and TV presenters everywhere professed themselves amazed by the scale of what they saw, by the ostentation and vulgarity of it. Practically every sighted, sentient being in the world, for instance, will have seen the gilded sofa-bed affair in the house of Gaddafi’s daughter Ayesha, with its “head” end carved in her image.
I was unsurprised and a bit underwhelmed by the revelations of the Gaddafi compound. It looked broadly as I’d expected but, if anything, rather disappointing, low-key and 1970s compared with other dictator-style mansions I’d seen. I’ve seen a lot of them, at least in photographs: Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Iraq (more than 60) with their extraordinary over-scaled design and bizarre sado-masochistic pictures; Imelda Marcos’s 1940s film-set rooms; emperor Bokassa’s imperial everything; the Ceausescus’ gigantic palace in Bucharest. I’d pored over pictures of all these places and more – the homes of 16 dictators from the 1890s to the 21st century – for my book Dictators’ Homes back in 2005.
The premise was absolute style – what happens when people with absolute power and absolute resources have their way with their buildings and interiors. My going-in point was ironic, frivolous and, frankly, rather snobbish. I was hoping the interiors would turn out to be completely over the top. I wasn’t disappointed. I also started with some assumptions, namely that dictators were pretty much history and their decorating style would soon be too.