You don't have to look very hard to find stately homes in englands green and pleasant land. So prevalent was the landscaped parkland of the 18th century that people believe english countryside is supposed to look like that. Therefore to get our cultural fix, we english people sometime visit these stately homes and their pastoral surroundings.

I've been dragged around a fair few stately homes as a child. They all seemed to be the same. Pastel labyrinths of grandiose furniture and anonymous portraits of very important people. The thing is, for all the display of opulence and excess, I always found it impossible to imagine life in the homes of the rich and powerful. Perhaps when I become rich and powerful I'll finally understand. I think the government have discerned my master plan because now they're planning a Mansion Tax.

I've been visiting the grounds of Lydiard Park, our local stately home, since I was a child. Back then it really was in the countryside. Now it's a popular venue for walking dogs and kicking footballs for the local residents, although none of them could afford to live there either. Given the neighbours would use the front lawn as a playground, I can see why they wouldn't want to if they could afford it. But in all that time I've never been inside the house itself.

Yesterday I was invited to visit that very house. Yes, I know, the first thing you see is a pastel labyrinth of grandiose furniture and anonymous portraits of very important people. That is of course expected of a stately home and indeed, it always was, even when they were lived in. And what a crowd lived in that house over the years. Some of them were important politicians in their day. One was a hellraising horse fanatic. One member of the family, Barbara Villiers, turns out to have been a lover of Charles II. She was, by all accounts, utterly shameless. Mind you so was he.

That of course was the usual public tour. Everyone who goes inside the house discovers these things. However, as an invited guest, I got to see their cellars. Not a single skeleton. Imagine my disappointment. After years of Dungeons & Dragons you learn to expect certain standards.

Better yet was a visit to the attic level. After following the crude walkways under the rafters I was shown small bedrooms here and there, tiny hovels for servants to stay out of the way when not being bossed about. No skeletons there either, but quite an insight to life among the slightly less well off in the days when owning a stately home was financially possible.

Palace of the Week

Of course if you own oil reserves a palace might not be beyond your resources, although I do note that it's difficult to avoid intervention from the armed forces of the western world if you do. Saddam Hussein owned thirty odd palaces and look what happened to him.

I had to laugh at the news reports now that libyan rebels have broken in to one of Gaddafi's oil-funded homes. Expensive clothes? Conspicuous consumption? Why was anyone suprised?