Weston Park, Shropshire, the setting for this week's Northern talks, has an interesting history. But whether a mention in the Doomsday Book or, more lately, being P.G.Wodehouse's model for his fictional Blandings Castle, influenced the less than satisfactory outcome is a matter of conjecture.
Blandings is the home of Lord Emsworth, a daydreamer whose only passion is his prize pig. Weston Park has been home to the Eearls of Bradford for more than three centuries. The current Earl of Bradford is a hard-line anti-European who, having handed over the 1671 mansion to a charitable trust to avoid ££8million death duties in 1986, now lives in a modest house on the 900-acre estate and owns the local pub.
In proper country-house style, the principals were up at the mansion and the hacks were down at the gate all week. About 100 journos amused themselves, between the downpours spent sheltering under a big beech tree, by playing cricket, with umbrellas as bats and traffic cones as stumps. Their pitch was a square of grass at the entrance, but proximity to the busy A5 meant several dangerous forays to retrieve the ball. To add insult to injury, there was an unseemly row with the Weston Estate. The Earl denies involvement, over the ££100 fee the hacks were forced to pay to park their cars in a field.
More importantly, is Weston Park bugged? Lancaster House, London, where the 1998 Northern talks were held, is reputed to be the most bugged building in Britain - a legacy from the colonial conferences of the 1950s and 1960s when HMG had wanted to find out what each side was up to in the privacy of their own delegation rooms. Quidnunc's friendly spook tells her that country houses are among the easiest to bug: -ornate decorations, elaborate fittings, long curtains, wide columns and all that - you know, - handy for running wires.