Holed up in a freezing Army camp in the far north of Scotland in 1941, the shivering and lonely young music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor dreamed up the idea of living down South with like-minded friends after the war.
He envisaged a pretty house with a piano, books, gramophone records, shabby armchairs, pictures and sparkling conversation round the dinner table.
It came to pass, just as he had hoped. In spring 1945, he and two friends — music critic Eddy Sackville-West, cousin of Vita, and art dealer Eardley Knollys — snapped up an old rectory in Long Crichel, Dorset for £7,500. They were joined in 1949 by the literary critic Raymond Mortimer, who bought a quarter share.