An armchair voyeur gets a glimpse into Nicky Haslam’s vast address book

Phaidon pioneered the modern art-book in 1936. The formula was: large format, fine production, exceptional plates, and essays by the superstars of German art history. After Richard Schlagmann acquired the imprint in 1990 Phaidon maintained, even enhanced, its reputation for good design, but visual style was prioritised over editorial substance and writers were marginalised. That is, more or less unwanted and, if wanted, not paid very well.

Since 2012 Phaidon has been owned by hedgie Leon Black. The interest in massive, high-concept illustrated product remains, but design and production have slipped. Or so I thought, effortfully working my through Room: Inside Contemporary Interiors, edited by Nacho Alegre and others (£49.95, Spectator Bookshop, £44.95). Ten designers and critics have been asked to nominate ten remarkable interiors from the past five years. Interesting stuff, but with iffy reproduction and chaotic design, the result is neither a visual treat nor, lacking essential maps, a useful practical guide.

Still if you wonder what critic Frederico Duarte and restaurateur-patron Alan Yau enjoy, here’s your answer. Duarte: Nestle’s Cookery School in Belo Horizonte’s central market by Marcelo Rosenbaum. Yau: James Plumb’s hipster haven in Shoreditch, a shop called Hostem which he describes as ‘ominous, atavistic beauty and otherworldly gothic drama’. Maybe writing is making a comeback at Phaidon.

Taschen is Phaidon’s big international art-book rival. Rock Covers (£44.99, Spectator Bookshop, £39.99) is a gigantic survey by record collectors Robbie Bush and Jonathan Kirby, assembled for the page by designer Julius Wiedemann. Like most Taschen books, its slight text is tri-lingual. The material is wonderful: the book jacket is the 1975 Hipgnosis’ Dark Side of the Moon for Pink Floyd and, inside, classics such as Richard Avedon’s portrait of Simon and Garfunkel for 1968’s Bookends. The subject merits so thorough and authoritative an account (over 750 albums are included) and caption details are good, but the layout is too busy and unsystematic to raise it from a source of nostalgia and curiosity to a work of reference.