The constellation of eighteenth-century houses and villas beside or near to the Thames, from Chiswick to the western limits of London, all open to visitors, constitutes a remarkable index of English taste. There were, of course, many more, particularly along the north bank of the river at Twickenham, where dowagers and poets lived cheek-by-jowl to gain a view of the Thames. We can perhaps regret the late nineteenth-­century destruction of Twickenham House itself, which had lost much of its land and appeal when the new railway could be heard and seen from the drawing-room windows.

The notion of Britishness has languished under an interrogative spotlight in recent years. It was tossed playfully to and fro, verbally and visually, during the 2012 Olympic Games, the Royal Wedding and the Queen’s Jubilee; it has recently been recast in right-wing political parties’ favour; it continues to divide Parliament as the Eurozone stumbles. The only semblance of a consensus is that there exists no clear notion of what it is to be ‘British today’, so that ‘diversity’ is proudly (and inevitably) cited as its unifying feature.