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I'll tell you what colonial experience is.

Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.

The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.

I'm just fascinated by houses. In another life, I'd have probably trained as an architect. If I had enough money, I'd collect them like other people collect teapots. I don't know why I love them so much. I'm just very interested in the idea of a house as a metaphor for the way one lives.

The old process of social assimilation used to be mainly about English new money - generated in London, the mucky, brassy North or the colonies - buying those houses and restoring them, and doing the three-generation thing, mouldering into the landscape, and the 'community,' identifying with the place in a familiar way.

The largest and most influential houses chiefly demonstrate the aloofness of the French approach.

I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.

Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.

I think homes are a palpable form of investment, and I understand them.

My family and I live in a wing of a Georgian mansion in East Sussex, which was built in the 1780s and fell into disrepair. It was rescued in the Seventies and carved into six terrace houses.