"So significant (and unusually well documented) is the collection described in this book that in recent years a number of scholars--the writer of this review included--have elaborated various aspects of the collection's formation and the history of its display in a series of different spaces, galleries and public museums from its formation in the 1790s to the present. Humfrey's book is a welcome addition to this body of research. Over the course of four long chapters, generously illustrated with colour reproductions, he chronicles the development of the Bridgewater / Stafford / Sutherland collection during a period of more than a century. At its heart Humfrey's book is about the formation of the collection. Indeed, to understand what was at stake in the cultures of display that gave rise to the great private galleries built by this family at Cleveland House and subsequently at Bridgewater House and Stafford House, it is essential to make sense of the collection's particularly complicated history. This history was bound up with family history and inheritance, but also with socio-political developments, such as the development of British collecting generally and increasing sympathy among the upper classes towards the notion that the public would benefit from access to art collections. As a result, Humfrey's book forms an essential contribution for scholars working on London's art networks and spaces for display, and on the evolution of collecting practice and what aristocratic collections signified to the general public during the nineteenth century.".