The Cotswolds · Present day
Closed doors.
Devious escapades.
A code known only to those who keep it.
The decisions that matter are not made in Westminster.
A serial of quiet manipulation and louder appetites.
Before you begin
The villages look the same as they did a hundred years ago. Limestone holds its colour. The pubs keep the same hours, more or less. Visitors come for the weekend and leave by Sunday evening, and the country closes its door behind them.
By dark the people who matter are indoors. Their houses sit behind walls; their drivers have been paid for discretion as much as for distance. The dinners worth knowing about are not in the diaries that get published, and the names at those tables appear on no public list.
There is a code, and there are those who keep it. They are not given to explaining themselves. What follows is as close as a reader is likely to come.