An overflow of bookshelves, a huge kitchen, a cellar, music, dogs, hens, donkeys children . . . all the ingredients for civilised life

In the later 1850s, Palmerston was Prime Minister: Gladstone, his Chancellor. It was a successful partnership between two very different characters. As Roy Jenkins used to say, Palmerston’s willingness to put up with Gladstone — never an easy subordinate — proves that he was more that a bombastic Regency rake. At different times, the pair made the two wisest comments ever to emerge from a Liberal (the only two wise comments?). Gladstone: ‘Money is best left to fructify in the pockets of the people.’ Palmerston: ‘Change, change, change: aren’t things bad enough already?’ If modern Liberals talked like that, their party might have some hope of survival.

Palmerston’s trenchancy came back to me while I was on my way to do some trenchering in a western part of England whose beauty is past change. I have friends who live in a wonderful, sprawling, endlessly welcoming house which they liken to a hobbit’s dwelling.