Where did the idea stem from?
I suppose it partly came about as a result of the lockdown. Jackie and I were rattling around the place like two very decorative dried peas in a huge tin, and our children were finding it difficult to find somewhere nice to live. The thought occurred that this is exactly how people lived until the 20th century.
Back then and now, in other parts of the world, they don’t have old people on the other side of the country pining to see their grandchildren, whose parents can’t afford childcare.
What attracted you to the house?
We moved in 2007 from a lovely house in Greenwich. Both of us had only ever lived in London, but Jackie had always said it’s vulgar to live in a town past 40, so we intended to move to the country.
I never saw our house as I was filming in India and Jackie found it, loved it and I just said go ahead and buy it.
What’s it like?
It doesn’t feel quite like a Cotswold house, it’s a bit Mediterranean, L-shaped, and with the original 16th-century farmhouse and garden. Hermione has the wing, which was put on in 1640 and is rather grand. Jackie still hisses to people that she has been forced to live in a two-up, two-down.
This is true, but it’s a pretty two-up, two-down, with a ballroom. Yes, I am taking the 16th century into the 21st century via the 19th century, with a nod to William Morris.
What is the style you’ve gone for?
I’m not into this modernist idea that every room should have beige colours. Bollocks to that. I think each room should be a completely different experience. You should be able to wander about your house like it’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”, which everyone had until the 20th century.
You had a Pompeian dining room and a Moorish smoking room, and we’re very much like that. I use our house as an aesthetic laboratory. Our bedroom has a coral theme, you could be in Italy, France, or Mauritius. It is deliberately celebratory of being away on holiday.
The dining room is a Cotswold Fantazia, a Disney explosion of flowers, and our drawing room is a fabulous evocation of the 1980s. Swags and tails, Joan Collins would feel very at home there if she turned up for a Cinzano.