I love the posher parts of London: those streets of whitewashed Georgian townhouses, far from the madding crowds of shoppers and tourists.
I find the immaculately-maintained private gardens in the middle of the squares particularly enticing. If you’ve ever strolled around the city, you’ll know the sort of place I mean: iron railings, freshly-painted (*always* freshly painted) in black. A locked gate. Inside the railings, a border of trees and thick evergreen foliage – offering a mere glimpse of a footpath inside, around a perfectly-mown lawn in the greenest of greens.
Of course, I’m not posh enough to have ever been inside one of the squares; I’m the sort of hoi polloi that the padlocks are designed to keep out of these most genteel of pastures. But I did stay in a hotel in Belgravia recently facing on to such an oasis – and I finally realised why I find them so fascinating.
Because those trees surrounding the garden, dear readers, were silver birches. And the true purpose of the countless squares suddenly revealed itself. For the daughters of the nobility would need to be kept in order; their maids properly disciplined. And how else would one secure a supply of fresh rods for the administration of city-cente thrashings?