The comfort of home, the refuge of the sofa and the slippers, the safe and private land behind the closed front door where all is one’s kingdom – where, as the cliché has it, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle' – is a particularly abiding British preoccupation, and we have the Victorians to thank for it. How ironic then that homes the classiest of English society were anything but safe.

The comfort of home, the refuge of the sofa and the slippers, the safe and private land behind the closed front door where all is one’s kingdom – where, as the cliché has it, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle' – is a particularly abiding British preoccupation, and we have the Victorians to thank for it. How ironic then that homes the classiest of English society were anything but safe.