The Spectator’s notes | 27 October 2007

This week, my family celebrated a century of continuous occupation of the house in Sussex where my sister now lives. The place came into the family in the 19th century, but was let to the Church of England Temperance Society as a home for 38 ‘adult male inebriates’ until my great-grandfather and his second wife reclaimed it. Their reoccupation is commemorated by a carved panel in the dining room which quotes the first line of the 127 Psalm — ‘Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it’ — in Latin. The couple’s initials are picked out from the rest of text in gilt and the date — MCMVII — is shown by raised lettering. By chance, 38 of us — only a minority of us adult, male and inebriate — sat down to lunch on Sunday. The obvious point that the first half of the century traversed had been very, very much harder than the second struck me.