“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
This is the story of the Spicers of Spye Park, and if they sound like characters in an eerie film, there certainly has been plenty of attention paid to the sets. Spye Park – so-called because of its unique vantage point over the village of Lacock in Wiltshire – was originally a Jacobean house lived in by a Mr Baynton, who gambled it away.
Finalist in the Catherine Pakenham Award. Illustrious previous winners and runners-up have included Tina Brown, Polly Toynbee and Sally Beauman.
In a Regency house just off the Mall, a man wearing an MCC tie sits behind an enormous mahogony desk. On the other side of the desk is a navy-suited strawberry blonde. Suffice to say her name is Camilla.
The man questions her about her hobbies, and Camilla answers easily enough. Then he suddenly slips in a question about Middle Eastern politics. His manner remains relaxed but emotionless, but Camilla is unnerved, sensing a menacing undercurrent.
When they heard that their son, Peter, was an Aids virus carrier, his parents felt annoyed. ‘We didn’t think it was our turn for another…
This is the story of the Spicers of Spye Park, and if they sound like characters in an eerie film, there certainly has been plenty…
After the laid-back Sixties and street-marching Seventies, hard work appears to be back in vogue.