HOWZAT

However, I remember a few years after The Duchess came out, I spent £500 on a beautiful leather-bound edition of the The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire by Gibbon, which I was very proud of and still have.

What property do you own?

A battered three-bedroom, 19th-century terrace in Fulham.

I’ve had it for about 17 years and bought it for £160,000 with some help from my mother after my father died. I would say it is definitely worth more than £500,000 now.

The place is a bit small for us now, though. When we come to London, all the children sleep in the same bedroom because Jonathan and I use one of the rooms and we still rent out the other.

The lodger has been with us for about eight years so he’s become part of the family — he writes speeches for a top politician. Besides, he looks after the house. We only charge £75 a week.

We have to find somewhere soon because I don’t think we can squeeze everybody in like this anymore.

We live most of the time in New York, where we rent. It’s where I do my research on the American Civil War. I went over eight years ago and have kind of stayed there ever since.

Why have you never bought in the US?

I’ve always thought I’d come back to Britain so I never got round to buying. Besides, where we are, in Manhattan, the prices are still astronomical despite the housing slump — a $5m property is now offered at a bargain price of $4.8m, or something like that!

Have you ever been hard up?

No. You can’t go to university and say that you’ve been hard up. Being unable to buy a new pair of shoes is different to having to stay in a hostel because it was either that or the street.

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