To one side of the central, formal, dining room is the kitchen with its own dining area. On the other, you pass through the Egyptologist's study before entering a swimming pool pavilion that - though small - rivals the Edwardian opulence of the Royal Automobile Club's famous basement pool in Pall Mall. Gorgeous colours, square blue Egyptian columns with subtly-gilded capitals, a black pool and an intriguing shiny dark blue vaulted ceiling. It looks like enamelled metal but turns out - in a typically Outramesque use of modern materials - to be made of ultra-thin stretched plastic film. The pool pavilion breaks the otherwise absolute symmetry of the house by extending forward of the main building, so bringing in more daylight.

The QC's study occupies a rear corner of the house, behind the pool and off the hall. It's done in more subdued colours, but the barrister in question now acknowledges that he was over-cautious. Outram's interior colours may seem too rich at first but the eye and brain soon adjust to them: it takes only a few minutes to acclimatise. From the hall a winding stair rises to the main living room, set on the first floor directly above, beneath the central of the three curving roof sections. A fire in the centre of the room is contained within a glass pyramid: the furniture, an eclectic collection, is all more or less Egyptian in feel and of course there are sphinxes everywhere. Two circular "oculus" windows high up beneath the roof open mechanically to provide cross-ventilation in summer.

Up here the symmetry persists. The owners' bedroom, bathroom and dressing room occupy one wing of the house off to one side of the living space. The master bedroom has double doors leading onto a roof terrace on top of the pool pavilion. On the far side of the living room are two guest bedrooms and another bathroom.

So for all its Egyptian grandeur, big spaces, long views and overall sense of occasion, this is a relatively small house. It is even built relatively conventionally, though the timber framing for those curving copper-clad roofs is not exactly a standard builder's job. Nor are the specially-coloured renders used on the exterior, made to Outram's personal formula. So you could describe this as just a three-bedroom house in the country. But it doesn't exactly fit that billing, does it?

Outram continues on his merry way. He rings up. He has just won a commission to build what he describes as a "castle" of 100 new homes in the Netherlands, his second job in that country following a highly unorthodox shopping centre in The Hague. It will be a sight to behold.