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.