'Are you downsizing?’ asked the estate agent sympathetically, as I squeezed past her to view a potential flat.
As a fellow oldie, she had guessed right. Like thousands before me, I was having to face up to the fact that the time had come (accelerated by the termination of an eye-watering interest-only mortgage) to surrender my family home of 25 years.
I’ve moved several times, but never before have I been forced into a small space that’s precluded most of my books, paintings and treasured possessions.
As a journalist or John Masters’s had long held pride of place on my sitting-room shelves. Meanwhile, my study boasted two entire walls of floor-toceiling bookshelves. I’ve always adhered to Anthony Powell’s maxim ‘Books do furnish a room’ and feel a reassuring rapport with anyone whose home I discover to be full of books.