Eleanor Doughty

This was the BEST podcast to do, I loved it! And you can listen now! It is really worth your time if I may say

Hereditary peer Lord Mancroft: ‘They don’t care about fox hunting. It’s about us’ The Conservative politician and former master of hounds on House of Lords reform, the pros and cons of privilege — and his numerous tattoos

Delighted to see that comrade @henrymance.ft.com had just as much fun interviewing Benjy Mancroft for the FT as I did for my book. He is a 10/10 lunch date
www.ft.com/content/ab4d...

!!!!!!!

Heirs and Graces There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses and estates, t...

It’s World Book Day and I am off to talk to my old school about writing books! Why not treat yourself to my book, HEIRS AND GRACES? The paperback is available to preorder now, but if you can’t wait pick up the hardback. It is SUCH good value and it’ll come tomorrow
www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305...

‘I’ll inherit one of Britain’s first rewilded estates. You can’t let tradition hold you back’ Great Estates: Knepp Castle was transformed by rewilding – now the next generation is shaping its future

This week's Great Estates is on Knepp – yes, the rewilding one – and Ned Burrell, who speaks cogently about his inheritance, about farming and about food security. It would be easy to be romantic about Knepp but he's pragmatic. It's a great piece if I may say
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/435f14a...

‘I’ll inherit one of Britain’s first rewilded estates. You can’t let tradition hold you back’ Great Estates: Knepp Castle was transformed by rewilding – now the next generation is shaping its future

This week's Great Estates is on Knepp – yes, the rewilding one – and Ned Burrell, who speaks cogently about his inheritance, about farming and about food security. It would be easy to be romantic about Knepp but he's pragmatic. It's a great piece if I may say
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/435f14a...

Found a pile of unused blueys, presumably deriving from my dad’s last tour of the Middle East. Would they still work? Have I time travelled to early 2000s postage rates?

Salisbury for PM, I say. It’s worked before!

That's a thought - I don't know but would be interested to know at what point they get involved, ie how far down in the process can a candidate be before HoLAC intervene. It's just shoddy from KS, a man who you'd think would be good at this quite basic stuft.
Hell I reckon I'd be better at it

As Robert Salisbury says, via Lenin, everything is connected to everything else – you can’t reform the Lords without the Commons and why would the Commons give away their power? That is such an interesting idea but it seems far too pragmatic for anything the British constitution is likely to produce

Ironically since 1999 it’s far less of a roll of the dice because now they have to be elected it self-selects the competent and interested! I agree – due diligence seems a foreign concept and it all harms the Lords, with no sense of anyone coming to sort it out in anything more than a surface way

And still people believe the hereditary peers are the problem… (!)

Big news for the latter if not, given that he very famously fell out of his own coffin at his funeral in 1989

I have to say that it is very good indeed – very long and complete with leg straps! But really it's for riding so I do look a bit like I've lost my horse

A great day to discover that I have the same coat as Nigel Farage (probably more than one, to be fair)

‘We have a whole room filled with broken loos’: The reality of running a castle As comedian Alan Carr reveals plans to buy his own castle, we spoke to owners about the pros and cons of living in one

More essential castle journalism from me – featuring Raby Castle and Lord Barnard’s array of spare rooms containing cupboards of OE ties still covered in food, broken kettles, loos and computers and another full of generations of horsehair mattresses... bonkers
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/40fd676...

Inside the 1,000-acre estate run by one of Ireland’s last remaining chatelaines Great Estates: Sammy Leslie has never regretted turning her ancestral home into a luxury hotel

This week's Great Estates is on Castle Leslie, one of the last big houses in Ireland still owned by its founding family – with a remarkable woman at the helm, Sammy Leslie, whose stories about life on the border during the Troubles and beyond utterly fascinated me
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/dff8810...

I tell you what’s humbling, doing a spin session at the gym with the Olympic mountaineering on the tv in front

Quite a man! Five of his 12 children died in his lifetime but he made up for it. A painting hangs at Wentworth Woodhouse about which he used to say that he had bred everything in it – not just two of his daughters, the horses and the hounds, but the huntsman and a member of the hunt staff too

Paging the International Monarchist League

I've no idea as I'm only on the first episode!

Tony Blair: “I don’t know why anyone would be interested in doing a programme on me”

Also Tony Blair: allows Channel 4 to broadcast a three-part programme on him

Cool

ooh i shall enjoy this!

‘We have a whole room filled with broken loos’: The reality of running a castle As comedian Alan Carr reveals plans to buy his own castle, we spoke to owners about the pros and cons of living in one

More essential castle journalism from me – featuring Raby Castle and Lord Barnard’s array of spare rooms containing cupboards of OE ties still covered in food, broken kettles, loos and computers and another full of generations of horsehair mattresses... bonkers
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/40fd676...

We didn't talk about it per se but I am given to believe that her brother won't pursue it for reasons that I won't post here!

Inside the 1,000-acre estate run by one of Ireland’s last remaining chatelaines Great Estates: Sammy Leslie has never regretted turning her ancestral home into a luxury hotel

This week's Great Estates is on Castle Leslie, one of the last big houses in Ireland still owned by its founding family – with a remarkable woman at the helm, Sammy Leslie, whose stories about life on the border during the Troubles and beyond utterly fascinated me
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/dff8810...

There's nothing like the village WhatsApp when a utility goes down. Today, water – which feels highly ironic given how much of it is coming out of the sky

Spending my day, emotionally and textually, in 1920s Ireland, among the republicans burning down the big houses, and this seems a much more dignified place to be than today's world

The PM says how Mandy ‘lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein’, that 'what was not known' was 'the sheer depth' of it. But surely any association with him whatsoever – given that this was well known – ought to have disqualified him. Am I missing something?

‘I have two stately homes, but you should never be under the illusion that you own them’ Great Estates: Lady Meyrick says it’s ‘humbling’ to leave it all behind for the next generation

She rather moved me with the way she talked about the estates – that they overwhelmed her, that dealing with 700 years of history at Bodorgan was just too, too much, that it stifled her creativity. And then Bird fixed it all. It's a lovely story if I may say
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/28cb19d...