Dr Clare Taylor's new book The Design, Production and Reception of eighteenth-century wallpaper in Britain is published this week. It is the first academic study of eighteenth-century wallpaper. Much has been written on ceramics, textiles, furniture and even lacquer but wallpaper has been hitherto ignored as a component of the eighteenth-century interior, however, this book shows it was a key new decorative material. It looks at the material from the perspective of those who made, hung and chose paper, examining archives, wallpapers and houses to trace the journey of this newly fashionable material, hung by everyone from the Royal family, to Earls, Countesses and to prosperous professionals-such as lawyers, bankers and apothecaries (the doctors of today) on their way up. It covers London houses as well as those in the country, since in London, with grand houses having no family portraits to hang, or rented houses in need of a quick fix, wallpaper rapidly gained ground.  The book opens up the subject to those interested in their own homes, to designers and to scholars by showing how wallpaper imitated other materials, by explaining how the trade worked and by allowing readers to discover eighteenth-century wallpapers for themselves- from flocks to stucco paper, to Chinese, French arabesques and ‘mock India’ papers.