Familiar danger

TO Jon’s surprise, Mr Pringle agreed to speak to him in the snug. Once they were seated there, Jon spoke quietly. “I’m a stranger here, and I want to keep an open mind. “So it would help if you could

THE fire in the great hall burned brightly to welcome Lady Dunstone’s guests to the event of the season, the Dunstone Manor Christmas Ball. The Manor was splendid this year. Snow glittered on the tree

IT was two days until Christmas and the afternoon sky was blue and crisp as Lydia’s car pulled up in front of the magnificent Bristol Hotel. Why was it called the Bristol? she wondered. It was nowhere

RONNIE and I had enlisted with the agency as house-sitters for people who wanted their properties to be occupied when they went away. We assumed any bookings would be in the summer months. “That’s cer

The writer Daphne du Maurier was fascinated by the English country house. Jeremy Musson explores her evocation of these buildings with the help of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice

HELLO, little one!” Penny Dauntless greeted a robin-redbreast, who cocked his head as she pushed along her trolley of post on the daily round. “How often is there such a perfect mid-December morning?”