Shuffling into the viewing room behind a party of bored Spanish school children, I pause for a second, adjusting my eyes to the dimmed lights.  Signs demand “No Photography”, and no-nonsense navy-blazered stewards are ready to pounce.  Inside its glass case (look, don’t touch) the sheer scale of the Dolls’ House is astounding.  Five feet high and nearly twice as wide, the exterior is all Corinthian columns, friezes and coats of arms.  Although entirely carved from wood, it’s painted to look like Portland stone, off-white and typically Georgian.

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Crouching down to the wrought iron gates and balustrades, two tiny stone cherubs stare back at me.  As I look closer, I almost see them beckoning, inviting me to shrink down and explore their kingdom.  The hubbub of other visitors gradually recedes as I make my decision – I’m going in.

 

And as if by Wonkavision or Alice’s ‘Drink Me’ potion, I’m there, standing on the front garden’s paved footpath.  Neat rows of bristly conifers are interspersed with wooden pots of clay roses, hydrangeas and rhododendrons, permanently in bloom.  Honeysuckle wraps itself around the base of smart oak benches, then snakes up the faux-stone walls.  It is stunning – but empty, a dolls’ house with no dolls.  There is no porcelain gardener to push the wheelbarrow, no whittled housemaid picking flowers for the breakfast table.  Perhaps this is for the best though – I am no pediophobe, but would not especially want to encounter any glassy-eyed fake humans.

 

Looking up at Sir George Frampton’s sculptures on the roof, I wonder whether he would have participated if this had been a mere plaything for the Royals?  We cannot know, but it seems logical that the sculptor of Kensington Gardens’ Peter Pan would want his striking work on display.  I walk up to the green painted front door, careful not to trip over the garden hose left carelessly on the path, my sense of anticipation almost bubbling over.

 

Stepping through the panelled front door into the grand entrance hall, I’m surrounded on all sides by real marble.  Pink and white patterned walls, a checkerboard floor, and a curved white staircase with sterling silver bannisters snaking upwards to left and right.  The entrance is guarded by two suits of armour, protecting a stunning mahogany grandfather clock fashioned in exquisite tiny detail by Cartier.  Heading up the sweeping staircase, I pause to appreciate the frescoed celestial ceiling.  Hand-painted in royal blue, white and gold, it is the first in a series of ethereal overhead artwork – I may be spending much of this exploration with my head tipped back at a right-angle. 

 

Where to go now?  There are five floors to explore, and at some point a steward’s going to notice I’m trespassing.  The elevator seems least conspicuous and besides, I’m too lazy to climb up all those stairs.  The passenger lift is electrified and fully functional, by far the most luxurious I’ve ever ridden.  Polished mahogany panels and a sumptuous velvet bench scream Victoriana and this is one of the anachronisms of the House – the latest 1920s mod-cons jostle against echos of earlier eras.  The building itself is in the Georgian style, but furniture designs range from the 1750s to the 1910s.  Perhaps this comes from a post-war desire to remind the public of golden eras and showcase the best of British, or just a determination for authenticity.

 

The elevator sails to the top floor, its fishing line cables thankfully holding my weight.  Disembarking into the east corridor, I imagine the laughter, excited energy, and temper-tantrums that would fill this space were it human-sized.  For this is the childrens’ floor - nurseries and a cosy bedsit for the nanny.  The expansive day room is every small child’s dream, filled with tin soldiers, rocking- and hobby-horses, model trains (complete with station) and a toy theatre forever showing Peter Pan.  A musical space too, with a grand piano, wireless, and mahogany gramophone from His Master’s Voice, which astonishingly plays minute records.  Artist Edmund Dulac’s fairytale characters leap out from every wall – Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Aladdin, and Sinbad all invite an escape into Wonderland.

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It is a joyful space where children can be both seen and heard, strict nannies notwithstanding.  In the night nursery, though, a more sombre sign of the times.  Alongside the tins of Allenbury’s rusks are tiny white woollen pullovers: pneumonia jackets to keep imaginary children warm should they be struck down in this pre-penicillin era.  It wasn’t only war which claimed million of lives during the early twentieth century.

 

Leaving the children’s wing, I enter the servants’ quarters and am reminded that two very different sets of people would occupy this mansion.  The housekeeper lives in a cosy single bedroom with cast iron fireplace and china wash set. A linen room doubles as her sitting room, boasting an elegant marble fireplace, oak cupboards, and a Chinese-style carpet.  A brand-new electric iron sits next to the Morning Post on the scrubbed wooden table, while the latest Singer sewing machine is on hand for last-minute mending.  Extraordinarily, there is enough linen in the cupboards to facilitate the running of a scaled-up house, from buttoned pillowcases to monogrammed napkins, in cotton, damask and wool.  It is no wonder that the embroidery took a lone seamstress over 1,500 hours to complete.

 

Though I could savour the imagined scent of pressed linen and waxed wood all day, there’s much more to see, and only a short time before the Dolls’ House is locked up for the night.  Down the dark corridor and side stairs, the butler’s bedroom mirrors the housekeeper’s, with the addition of a working electric trouser press and a to-scale copy of Country Life.  The bar of Pear’s Soap on the washstand has long lost its fragrance, but I conjure an aroma of competence and tradition. 

 

If there was simple comfort in the servants’ quarters, the exact opposite lies down one flight of stairs.  The Grand Saloon is quite extraordinary, a riot of gold, brocade and crystals.  Grecian-style friezes run around the coving, sandwiched in between ceiling frescos of angels in battle, and rose-gold damask wallpaper.  In my current Lilliputian form it is perfectly to scale, with detail so exquisite I momentarily forget everything is crafted to one-twelfth size. 

 

I take advantage of a Louis XV-style sofa and soak it in.  Two magnificent gold thrones stand at one end, lined with deep red velvet and topped with the monarchs’ crowns.  Their portraits, painted by unemployed outstanding feature, though, is the piano, standing imperiously under the Queen’s image.  Broadwoods’ fully-strung baby grand boasts 88 ebony and ivory keys, and is decorated all over with angelic beings in the pre-Raphaelite style.  It’s all I can do to resist a quick tune.

 

Reluctantly leaving the Broadwood behind and heading down the corridor, the Queen’s bedroom is no less resplendent.  The ceiling is a fresco of greens and blues with tiny pink cherubs laughing from stormy clouds, melting into more damask-patterned wallpaper and lit by a working crystal chandelier.  The four-poster bed is surrounded by heavy silk curtains and topped with a pearl-covered quilt.  On the dressing table stands a solid silver and enamel vanity set and a mirror framed in real diamonds, expensively weighty.  From the domed ceiling, four mermaids hover over the en-suite’s marble bathtub and double sink, neighbours of a floral-themed dressing room with white wooden wardrobes.

 

The King’s bedroom is equally magnificent.  George V’s cipher is rendered in plaster above the door, and the royal coat-of-arms embroidered above a headboard topped with ostrich feathers.  Rich mahogany furniture has a masculine vibe, as does the Wilkinson’s-manufactured silver sword on a side table.  The ceiling, once again, is extraordinary.  Painted stone pillars soar in false perspective up to the palest blue sky and at the top, a series of twigs and vines creates a musical stave.  Along its length, tiny orange flowers pick out the notes to the National Anthem.  I could look at it all day. 

 

Time is against me though, and it’s back to the mahogany panelled lift, descending to the dining room. It is, once again, extraordinary.  The ceiling is unsubtle, a heavenly war in reds and royal blues, and paintings take up almost every square inch of wall space.  A Chinese screen fashioned from playing cards shields one of the doors from view.  In addition to the huge walnut dining table and carved chairs, four serving tables groan with sterling silver serving dishes, and on the marble mantlepiece stands a Cartier carriage clock.  Honestly, it’s a little much.

 

Thankfully, just around the corner is the antithesis: a dependable kitchen, pantry and scullery.  On first glance the scrubbed oak table and cast-iron ranges are simplicity itself, but closer inspection reveals ambitious creators.  The parquet floor is constructed from over 2,500 tiny tiles of solid oak, and the lightbulbs are of handblown glass.  Though the kettles are in traditional copper, the pots and pans on the range are solid gold – highly impractical for real cooking, but the non-tarnish material must be a godsend for curators.  Even so, the 18ct nameplate on the mop is a little extravagant. 

 

Everything is here, from rolling pins to pastry moulds to a fully functional coffee grinder.  There are timesavers too – the latest model Hoover sits in the closet next to bars of Lux soap, and the knife cleaning machine can accommodate twelve blades at a time.  A clay kitchen cat and mousetrap (complete with trapped mouse) adds an air of whimsy.  In the pantry, 90 pieces of real china crockery are ready to be washed in the lead-lined sinks. 

 

The pot of Tiptree jam on the table is tempting, but at a century old it’s probably best left.  The next door Library is all Palladian pillars, silk velvet rugs and the rich scent of polished oak and leather.  I’m not sure I’d ever leave.  A regal desk sits opposite yet another marble fireplace; pens, ink, and a full set of ciphered stationery are ready for correspondence.  A pile of despatch boxes, precise replicas of the real thing and containing official-looking scrolls, are waiting to be read, with a handy magnifying glass for fine print.

 

There are plenty of leisure items to keep a monarch amused too.  Comfortable leather chairs pull up to a baize-covered table, complete with playing cards, dice, and a Jaques & Son chess board.  Richly-hued minute portraits of Tudor monarchs stare from the walls, challenging the current incumbent to live up to their achievements.

 

But it’s the shelves I’ve come to see, or rather their contents.  Over 600 tiny books, bound in leather and gilt-embossed.  Although around a third are blank, the rest contain prolific authors’ works, half handwritten by the writers themselves. 

 

The contributor list is quite extraordinary.  W. Somerset Maugham wrote a children’s fairytale, whilst Rudyard Kipling and Robert Bridges donated works about fairies.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned a new Sherlock Holmes story, and more weighty subjects were covered by H.H. Asquith and John Buchan.  Walter de la Mare, A.A. Milne, Siegfried Sassoon and W.B. Yeats all contributed poetry.  Notable writers were included posthumously, including excerpts from Charles Dickens, and the Complete Works of Shakespeare in 40 tiny volumes.

 

The 24 music scores come from from Delius, Holst, and Parry amongst others.  Not everyone was keen to contribute though: Sir Edward Elgar responded “…I’m asked to contribute to – a Dolls’ House for the Queen!... I consider it as an insult for an artist to be asked to mix himself up in such nonsense.”  There’s always one.

 

Amidst the volumes though, there are a few that stand out, appearing a little brighter.  And this is stands the Library apart: its additions.  Happily, the new books are no less grand, being similarly contributed by the likes of Sebastian Faulks, Philippa Gregory, Tom Stoppard, and Jacqueline Wilson.  A miniature version of The Gruffalo has been handwritten by Julia Donaldson with tiny illustrations by Axel Scheffler, and Charlie Mackesy has given the same treatment to The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.  The additions were the brainchild of Queen Camilla, who also contributes a volume.  Extraordinarily, nothing of this mixture of old and new feels awkward or out of place: book-binding and leatherwork skills are alive and well in the 21st century.

 

But it’s time to tear myself away and return to that century and real life.  As the Library melts away around me, I’m back in the dimmed room, gazing through the glass at the majestic Dolls’ House.  The steward in the corner catches my eye and winks – he knows what I’ve been up to.  As I go to head back outside into the bright Windsor sunshine, he whispers fervently, “I’m glad someone loves it as much as I do”.  And I really do.