My parents are over in London at the moment and renting out a flat for the time they are here. Beats a hotel. Anyway, the interior design is modern and minimalistic – no real sign that anyone lives there for some of the year. In fact, there’s a large built in bookshelf in the living room which is for the most part empty apart from shelving a few oddly-shaped vases, some ethnic sculptures and only eight – count’em – eight books. Thoughts like “What the – ?” and “Sacrilege!” and “Who are these people?!” careened through my mind. I mean, who only keeps eight books on a shelf that could accommodate one hundred? And then I noticed it. Amongst the eight books was a copy of our very own The Excursion Train, by Edward Marston. It suddenly all made sense. These were people who went to great lengths to remove all things superfluous – clearly choosing only to keep the very best reads. I take it all back, these are people with tremendous vision and taste.

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity Manager