Book excerpt: 'Home' is that intimate, closed, secret space where we impose our own laws and give shape to our own particular concept of the world. My House, My Paradise is a collection of houses in which the 'residents-cum-creators' have devoted all of their ingenuity, energy and determination into constructing what they perceive to be the ideal domestic universe. They include Ludwig II of Bavaria's Linderhof, the Cesar Manrique Villa in Lanzarote, Salvador Dali's villa in Spain, Edward James' villa in Mexico, Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta, Alex Jordan's house on the rock and William Randolph Hearst's Xanadu.