Society: It has become commonplace that whenever a dictator is deposed, assassinated or invaded by the country that put them in power in the first place, the world must gawp contemptuously at the palace from which they ruled.
Conquering soldiers will be shown sitting on the throne, poking through the wardrobes, lounging by the pool. The public gobbles up such pictures, fascinated both by the personality insight and the strange comfort to be found in the inevitably ghastly decor. It is a particularly modern schadenfreude to assess a dictator's record and declare him guilty not only of crimes against humanity but of crimes against fashion. He may have murdered millions and looted a nation, we sneer, but have you seen the state of his bathroom?
After the recent invasion of Iraq, PJ O'Rourke observed that "Saddam's chandelier was the size of a two-car garage. If a reason to invade Iraq was wanted, felony interior decorating would have done".
Did O'Rourke see the paintings? Saddam's palace was laden with soft porn sci-fi fantasies featuring dragons, rock-breasted centrefolds and cartoon genies. In Peter York's Dictators' Homes, an American soldier stares at one of them, and he is frozen with bewilderment. York's is a coffee-table book in which blood mixes with leopard-print drapes. He has looked beyond the horror of dictators wasting money, resources and lives, and jeers them for what they wasted it on. This could be considered a kind of Homes and Gardens for the mass-murdering set, except that a 1938 edition of Homes and Gardens actually featured a fine photospread of Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat, Berchtesgaden, and these images are rifled through with glee by York, who describes it as "an early Bond film setting. There are postcard views that look almost kitschy, almost ironic to a 21st-century eye. It's a villain's eyrie, an eagle's nest".
If you are happy, then, to stick with the prose of a man who can describe a stunning view of the landscape as "almost kitschy", then you'll enjoy the thrill of leafing through both the pictures of these dictators' homes and York's commentary.
He has a habit of noting the awfulness of an individual, but of dulling that with comic bitchiness. "The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, came here for the 'Peace in our Time' meeting in 1938. He probably stood on the terrace thinking 'That Herr Hitler is a bit intense' ". And with that York reduces great historical tragedy to a panel in a comic-book photo-story.
Dictators' Homes succeeds, though, not just because York is often very funny but because the pomposity of the subjects invites endless mockery. Manuel Noriega's heavily festooned Christmas tree really is a "cheap window display in a second-rate department store". The Ceausescus, petrified of germs, had bathrooms containing the "sort of stuff you'd strip out if you bought a house that belonged to a formerly successful geriatric". Tito, photographed in a room of stuffed animals, does indeed look "equally stuffed".
You flick through the pictures first, obviously. There is Kirk Douglas having tea with Tito and his "vicious-looking flower arrangements"; the supposed replica of the Forbidden City which plonks China in the middle of Mobutu's Zaire; and there is, of course, Imelda Marcos's shoe rack - or rather shoe room.
But if you come for the photos, you stay for the put-downs. York repeatedly parodies style-magazine journalism, so that just as every interiors magazine tells you how to "Get the Look", he does the same for those who want that dictator look. Lots of gold, lots of pictures of yourself and think big, he says. Dictator chic, he calls it. It is the style of new money, of the gate-crashers into the establishment.
They are an example of what happens when someone has infinite amounts of money and ego with which to indulge their fantasies. They never turn out anything that is subtle, atmospheric and modest because, frankly, York argues, dictators are just like the rest of us, only more so.
"Whether you think these interiors are terrible or, secretly, rather inspirational," he writes, "one thing is certain: none of them is beige. Somewhere in there is a lesson for us all."
Shane Hegarty is an Irish Times journalist
Dictators' Homes By Peter York Atlantic Books, 120pp. £14.99
