When I went to Hampton Court, I hadn’t reckoned on the Dementors. They weren’t real Dementors, those ragged ghosty creatures from Harry Potter. But in the big Tudor brick front quadrangle called Base Court, there were screams and noises as of axe-edges against stone. They were of a particular kind.

The kind was not one you hear in reality but only in cinemas: very loud and quadraphonic. A Nazgul might appear at any moment.

It was not conducive to gentle contemplation of the surroundings. I had meant to look at the sixteenth-century brickwork, an underrated building material. I wasn’t feeling all that placid in the first place. If I hadn’t been laid low by the effects of flu, I would have been in Suffolk as intended, not historic Middlesex.