The English country house dream has lost none of its magic. It is even stronger after a decade of City of London bonuses. The aim is still to buy a house, usually on the axis from the Chiltern Hills (north-west of London) to the Quantock Hills (in Somerset), make a lovely garden and tell one’s inner soul or partner that all the office hours have been worthwhile. The same dream began to surface in the recent boom in Ireland and it has even found takers in parts of France. I do not think it has ever really been rooted in Italy. The last Italian whom I told that I lived in a country house replied that the country was only for animals. In Russia, the countryside is still in a wretched state and few of the new oligarchs want to go near it. They would rather live in Mayfair, London.

As so often, Americans have invented a label for the country dream. They have an age that they call the Country Place Era. Its main energy ran from about 1880 to 1938, although it is certainly not yet dead. I have been reading about it with fascination in a fine new book, A Genius For Place by Robin Karson, her work of many years. It vastly enlarges our sense of landscape gardening’s history and the origins of what now seem like new fashions. As so often, the new actually has the shock of a forgotten past.