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When one finds the bottom of a barrel being energetically scraped, it is proof, at least, that whatever was once floating on the top must have been very delicious indeed. And so, having reached the very bottom of the barrel marked “Marcel Proust,” the scraping continues, even unto the splintered wood. The usual run of a famous author’s remains is more or less set: first the (disillusioning) biography, then the (surprisingly mundane, money-mad) letters, and finally the (painfully naked) diaries, in which erotic obsessions that seem curious and fresh in literary prose look mechanically obsessive in daily record, as with Kenneth Tynan and John Cheever. What comes after is mostly academic commentary.
Desborough Close
- Credit: Archant
Without the sale of Panshanger Estate, Welwyn Garden City would not be celebrating its centenary in 2020.
William Grenfell, the 1st Baron of Desborough, sold his wife s inheritance of 2,817 acres for £106,735. This works at around £4,801,992, not a bad price to build a future town on.
The Hertfordshire Mercury, dated July 23 1919, recorded the sale and the new purpose of the estate, as unfortunately the WHT, which was started in 1928 as the Welwyn Times after the new town was built, was not around to cover the sale.
The article writes: At the recent Panshanger Estate sale the area disposed of was 2,817 acres, and the price realised was £106,735.