Through the keyhole of Sir David Frost's Victorian pile in Chelsea
Let’s begin as they would on Through the Keyhole. Here is an ordinary room, a
study, in a central London penthouse. What clues can we gather about the
owner?
| Time and Place: Kate Mosse on growing up in West Sussex
In 1963, when I was 15 months old, my father, a solicitor, was offered a job
with a firm of lawyers in Chichester, West Sussex. We moved from Cheam, on
the outskirts of London, to a house in Fishbourne, a small village west of
Chichester, famous for its Roman palace. In those days, it had a post
office, three pubs, a shop and a church. Divided by the main road, it was
not a Miss Marple English village with dusty, sleepy lanes and rattling
carts. Our quiet, pretty cul-de-sac was one of several developments that had
sprung up in the 1950s to provide family houses and bungalows for retired
teachers and nurses, solicitors and employees of the bigger firms in
neighbouring Hampshire. There were plots of different sizes and shapes, and
no front fences. It was peaceful, modest and suburban. No fuss.
| Rum hangs out the welcome banner
A feeling of deep loneliness engulfs you when you step off the ferry onto Rum's rocky shore. This is a wilderness, an island in the Inner Hebrides that became defined by its sense of mystery. It is a place where the environment has been left to spread unbound, where the wind carries the rustle of leaves and bird cries, and voices are lost whispers. A sense of barren seclusion seeps from the soil.
| Estate agents become scapegoats for the property market slowdown
Rip-off thieves. Parasites on a gravy train. Worms. Leeches. Con artists.
Two-faced crooks. . . all descriptions of the humble estate agent offered
last week in the public domain. Such venom — and all this at a time when we
should really be feeling sorry for them.
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