Apethorpe
A couple of weekends ago we went to Apethorpe: until quite recently this was a large and unknown house unless you lived in Northamptonshire and knew through the local news of its chequered history - I didn't realise until we came that the Borstal to which one of my acquaintances was sent was probably here, nor that Porterhouse Blue was filmed here. For years, we had seen tantalising glimpses but never seen it properly. Now that English Heritage have bought it and spent a huge wodge of money on it to stabilise it, you can visit it, albeit only in the summer, and if you want to go you'll have to hurry, as the season en ds on 5th September . It is the most absolutely enchanting house. OH and I decided that if we had a spare £50 million (£5 million to buy it, another £12 million to carry on restoration, plus the rest to meet the enormous annual running costs and no doubt vast programme of annual maintenance) we'd buy it like a shot. It's the sort of house you'd never...