Classic appeal

There’s a fascinating new book about a man with a passion for a house which he lost and regained, brick by red Jacobean brick. The house was Thrumpton in Nottinghamshire, its devotee the late George Seymour, a complex man whose daughter, novelist and biographer Miranda Seymour, tells all with elegance and insight in In My Father’s House (Simon & Schuster, £14.99). ‘All’ includes George’s later passion for motorbikes and a couple of the men who rode them.

Whenever I met him, we kept to safer subjects — cars, mainly Jaguars.  He had owned several and knew Sir William Lyons, who founded and ran the company. George’s penultimate period Jaguar was a Mark 2 3.8 litre, the fastest (though not by much) and now the most collectable of that bloodline. Pulling off the M1 one day with overheating problems — not for the first time — he rang Sir William himself.  Sir William sent his own car and driver to take George home while the Jaguar was recovered.