Cambridge and London Libraries both this week, and both mines of treasure for the servant’s book. Read accounts of civil war sieges of various houses, and find one very good story in Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier. Also escort the daughter to London for a trip to the House of Commons, we take tea with one MP in the rather elegant courtyard of Portcullis House and then I leave her with grandfather. The end of my day is somewhat Pepysian, as I take tea at the Garrick with a potential author of a book for which I am currently series editor, and the sweltering heat, palazzo-style architecture, the white jacketed waiters add to the flavour of a taking tea in an old house in Rome. I then walk over to another ancient club where an old friend fills me in on nearly a decade of life in between.

The weather so lovely and the girls on school holiday, so some lunchtime dog walks have now been accompanied by small picnics on Stourbridge Common, watching the summertime civilian rowers. We are also doing a survey of the better ice cream vendors.