No dilly- dallying

I have a hazy memory of a 1950s television series on stately homes in which Richard Dimbleby (dubbed ‘Gold-Microphone-in-Waiting’ by Malcolm Muggeridge) would respectfully prompt their Wode- housian owners into trotting out seasoned anecdotes. ‘And this of course is the celebrated Red Drawing-room. Your Grace, I think, ahem, you have a story about that curious portrait over the fireplace?’ ‘Eh? What? Ah yes . . .’

Half a century on, his eldest son David adopts a different approach. We see him turning up in his Land-Rover at eerily empty houses, with no sign of the present proprietor or (more usually) the National Trust manager, and proceed to poke about. Informally attired in bright leisure-shirtings and alarming socks, our energetic guide, whose boyish enthusiasm belies his years (he will enter his 70th year this autumn), is ever ready to clamber on to a roof, jump into a tub, wriggle through a manhole, row on the lake at Stourhead, stand on the footplate of a steam engine, and so forth.