Eleanor Doughty

We didn't talk about it per se but I am given to believe that her brother won't pursue it for reasons that I won't post here!

Inside the 1,000-acre estate run by one of Ireland’s last remaining chatelaines Great Estates: Sammy Leslie has never regretted turning her ancestral home into a luxury hotel

This week's Great Estates is on Castle Leslie, one of the last big houses in Ireland still owned by its founding family – with a remarkable woman at the helm, Sammy Leslie, whose stories about life on the border during the Troubles and beyond utterly fascinated me
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/dff8810...

There's nothing like the village WhatsApp when a utility goes down. Today, water – which feels highly ironic given how much of it is coming out of the sky

Spending my day, emotionally and textually, in 1920s Ireland, among the republicans burning down the big houses, and this seems a much more dignified place to be than today's world

The PM says how Mandy ‘lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein’, that 'what was not known' was 'the sheer depth' of it. But surely any association with him whatsoever – given that this was well known – ought to have disqualified him. Am I missing something?

‘I have two stately homes, but you should never be under the illusion that you own them’ Great Estates: Lady Meyrick says it’s ‘humbling’ to leave it all behind for the next generation

She rather moved me with the way she talked about the estates – that they overwhelmed her, that dealing with 700 years of history at Bodorgan was just too, too much, that it stifled her creativity. And then Bird fixed it all. It's a lovely story if I may say
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/28cb19d...

‘I have two stately homes, but you should never be under the illusion that you own them’ Great Estates: Lady Meyrick says it’s ‘humbling’ to leave it all behind for the next generation

Plenty said it would never happen – that the Meyricks would talk about Bodorgan, Hinton Admiral and Bournemouth. Well, they have now. Great Estates this week is with the very thoughtful and quite remarkable Candida Meyrick, accompanied by her Harris hawk, Bird
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/28cb19d...

Thank you very much!

‘I have two stately homes, but you should never be under the illusion that you own them’ Great Estates: Lady Meyrick says it’s ‘humbling’ to leave it all behind for the next generation

She rather moved me with the way she talked about the estates – that they overwhelmed her, that dealing with 700 years of history at Bodorgan was just too, too much, that it stifled her creativity. And then Bird fixed it all. It's a lovely story if I may say
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/28cb19d...

‘I have two stately homes, but you should never be under the illusion that you own them’ Great Estates: Lady Meyrick says it’s ‘humbling’ to leave it all behind for the next generation

Plenty said it would never happen – that the Meyricks would talk about Bodorgan, Hinton Admiral and Bournemouth. Well, they have now. Great Estates this week is with the very thoughtful and quite remarkable Candida Meyrick, accompanied by her Harris hawk, Bird
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/28cb19d...

There’s nothing like believing your train is 20 minutes later than it actually is until the moment you get in the car, 15 minutes away, to give a bit of vim to a Wednesday morning

‘You can have the house or be rich – but rarely both’ Great Estates: Lord Inglewood is steadfast in keeping his home ‘deliberately low-key’

This week’s Great Estates is on Hutton-in-the-Forest and Lord Inglewood who was definitely one of my most thoughtful interviewees of 2025, a good egg who talks sense on a lot of things – particularly on Lords reform, on which he is utterly clear-eyed. Do read it!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/ce233e6...

‘You can have the house or be rich – but rarely both’ Great Estates: Lord Inglewood is steadfast in keeping his home ‘deliberately low-key’

This week’s Great Estates is on Hutton-in-the-Forest and Lord Inglewood who was definitely one of my most thoughtful interviewees of 2025, a good egg who talks sense on a lot of things – particularly on Lords reform, on which he is utterly clear-eyed. Do read it!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/ce233e6...

The cover of my book Heirs and Graces, a history of the modern British aristocracy, featuring Donough O'Brien, 16th Baron Inchiquin sitting in a chair looking like a baller in front of Dromoland Castle, County Clare, with two dogs and a knobbly stick.

I am super excited to say that my book HEIRS AND GRACES will be published in paperback on 11 June and here is the cover! I can only hope to be as cool as Donough Inchiquin! It remains available to buy in hardback/audio/ebook and you can pre-order the paperback now!
www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305...

The cover of my book Heirs and Graces, a history of the modern British aristocracy, featuring Donough O'Brien, 16th Baron Inchiquin sitting in a chair looking like a baller in front of Dromoland Castle, County Clare, with two dogs and a knobbly stick.

I am super excited to say that my book HEIRS AND GRACES will be published in paperback on 11 June and here is the cover! I can only hope to be as cool as Donough Inchiquin! It remains available to buy in hardback/audio/ebook and you can pre-order the paperback now!
www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305...

Enjoying my quarterly-ish browse of FixMyStreet and particularly the effort that one near-ish neighbour has gone to in reporting a sunken manhole lid with five photographs featuring a giant spirit level and a metal tape measure. Hell hath no fury like a man with a noisy metal plate outside his house

ICYMI my profile of England’s newest cardinal, Timothy Radcliffe, which I don’t mind saying that I am rather pleased with – on women in the Catholic Church, his life as a Dominican and how despite it he fell in love with a woman, on ministering to men with HIV and much more

How kind, thank you very much!

This is the first proper newspaper profile of Timothy Radcliffe since he became a cardinal and I don’t mind saying that I am jolly pleased with it

Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe: No one can simply say ‘I’m a woman’ – our biology is fundamental The leading Catholic on trans rights, an astonishing meeting with Pope Francis and what happened inside the secret conclave to elect Leo XIV

Ahead of this week’s extraordinary consistory at the Vatican, I went to Oxford to interview ‘don’t call me Cardinal’ Timothy Radcliffe: on women’s ordination, on ministering to those with HIV, what the Pope is like and whether he voted for himself at conclave
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/6ea3425...

What's so sad about when people get totally het up about one single line in a piece is that they miss the genuinely amazing bits. I'm feeling generous so this is one of them – the 3rd Lord Leconfield talking to the late Pamela Leconfield. Just outstanding. God bless the aristocracy, eh

‘I inherited 17,000 acres at 24. Rich people like me should pay tax and not complain’ Great Estates: Lord Egremont lives in one wing of his ancestral home. The National Trust runs the rest

A lot of people in the comments – which I have been reading with an amused smile and responding to, killing their fury with abject kindness – seem to have got totally the wrong end of the stick about him but oh well!! My job is so great!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/fd78733...

‘I inherited 17,000 acres at 24. Rich people like me should pay tax and not complain’ Great Estates: Lord Egremont lives in one wing of his ancestral home. The National Trust runs the rest

It's a happy new year and a very happy new Great Estates which this week is at mighty Petworth with the wonderful Max Egremont who I had a lovely time with despite Thameslink's best efforts. Yes he wants to pay more tax! No he's not virtue signalling! He's great!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/fd78733...

An extract from this interview with the writer and landowner Lord Egremont in which his mother Pamela was admiring the lake at Petworth alongside her husband's uncle Charles, 3rd Lord Leconfield: 'One day, when Lord Egremont's mother Pamela was admiring Petworth's lake, he said: "One day your husband will inherit from me not only all this, but also... half Derwentwater, the whole of Bassenthwaite Lake and the whole of Wastwaster... what you see there is not a lake. It is a pond."'

What's so sad about when people get totally het up about one single line in a piece is that they miss the genuinely amazing bits. I'm feeling generous so this is one of them – the 3rd Lord Leconfield talking to the late Pamela Leconfield. Just outstanding. God bless the aristocracy, eh

‘I inherited 17,000 acres at 24. Rich people like me should pay tax and not complain’ Great Estates: Lord Egremont lives in one wing of his ancestral home. The National Trust runs the rest

A lot of people in the comments – which I have been reading with an amused smile and responding to, killing their fury with abject kindness – seem to have got totally the wrong end of the stick about him but oh well!! My job is so great!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/fd78733...

‘I inherited 17,000 acres at 24. Rich people like me should pay tax and not complain’ Great Estates: Lord Egremont lives in one wing of his ancestral home. The National Trust runs the rest

It's a happy new year and a very happy new Great Estates which this week is at mighty Petworth with the wonderful Max Egremont who I had a lovely time with despite Thameslink's best efforts. Yes he wants to pay more tax! No he's not virtue signalling! He's great!
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/fd78733...

Am I the grinch who stole New Year's Eve or is it weird to be hearing fireworks at SEVEN THIRTY? Isn't the whole point that they go off at midnight and then for about 15 minutes and no more?

And if you are an editor who wants someone who genuinely knows about Lords reform today and/or the general state of the upper class and is in touch with hundreds of peers, including – as in this piece – the biggest landowners in the country, then I’m your girl. There is always more to say about it!

Heirs and Graces There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses and estates, t...

In case you somehow missed it, I have recently written a whole book, HEIRS AND GRACES, on the modern aristocracy which you can buy in all good or bad bookshops! There is a whole chapter on the Lords in it and it is also very good, if I may so! All links here
www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305...