Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Does the Duke of Devonshire really want to be my friend – or is he just after my bank details?

Chatsworth's marketing is the most duplicitous and effective I have ever known

[Getty Images] 
issue 26 July 2014

The Chatsworth estate, Derby-shire. I am overwhelmed by marketing literature. I am prostrate. I am weeping.

I am staying in one of the Duke of Devonshire’s barns, renovated into a one-bedroom ‘cottage’ with no interior doors. Maybe it was home to a horse once, maybe not; I do not know. I am a short walk from the Chatsworth Estate Farm Shop and Café, a longer walk from a branch of the Devonshire Arms, and 20 minutes from the Cavendish Restaurant, which is definitely in the stables at Chatsworth. (You probably want me to say something about Chatsworth House. OK. It is almost as ugly as Blenheim Palace.) I know this because the cottage is full of marketing literature with photographs of the duke — ‘Peregrine’ or ‘Stoker’ — and his wife ‘Amanda’ (no recorded nickname), smiling at me with papery and covetous malice.

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