Ben Fogles house... (purely nosey & invasive but still...)

[Polew]

To be shocked its Bizarrely... full & verry verry expensive

Rightmove listing

Finell. I know the areas 'come up' in the last 20 years but 26k per month? And a bloody.book rainbow ugh? Still too close to the nick, thanks. If you've got that kind of money to throw around there are.nicer places to chuck it.

@megletthesecond - fairly bright? He turned up from public school at Portsmouth Poly having failed his a-levels, not in a bright teenager having a few weird years but in a bit dim despite the best education money could buy.
There was a whole gang of not bright public school kids that year that seemed to sniff each other out during Freshers week.

I kind of love that sort of posh-person clutter (not disimilar to Princess Anne's!), and the trees in the garden are gorgeous.

I'm always totally baffled why people are willing to pay quite such ridiculous sums of money just to live in London, though. Like, I get it's convenient, but surely not 26k a month convenient!! Plus, a 700k house fetches 2k+ rent, so for 26k you should be renting a house that's worth about 9mil..... Something seems very off with those numbers?

My first thought too.

This looks like the interior designer was told to make it look 'cross between posh person clutter and garden shed chic'. Looks totally contrived rather than genuine cosy with lots of 'stuff' collected over the generations/from our travels/over the years.

For me, order means by author, then by series, each in date order. Anything else is just a jumble!

I love reading, but I also love things to be ordered logically. I’ve got sets of books by different publishers, so visually they might look different, but it’s the inside that matters!

I wondered whether the colour coordinated books might be OS maps, they would make sense ordered by colour and number.

Looks like it has been covered in glue and had the contents of one of those over priced cushions and candles "saw you coming" interiors shops emptied into it.

It’s funny isn’t it? I understand where you’re coming from, it is logical. But I have a memory of where every book is so it makes sense to me, and satisfies my senses!

Looks like it's been done by a "professional" . I couldn't be arsed to clean a place like that or even live in it.

It doesn't look like a collection of things that's been collected over the years. It all looks a bit coordinated and contrived. I like the patterned tiles.

For a London house, that's an absolutely fabulous view at the back.

Looks lived in and homely, exactly as a family home should be.

Shopping centres were using hanging umbrellas as decoration 20 years ago… I hate to think of the dust in them and the cooking smells they absorb!

Super rich bankers, oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil tycoon’s family etc. lots of new international money in Kensington now.

😄 a sort of semi-war preparation/ 'just trust me to find other things to do'

This! It's embarrassing to be a person with a decent education and sorting your books by colour. It would be much harder to find a specific book, which would make me feel that it was performative rather then someone who was actually interested in books.

I should declare that we have >2000 books in our place, so the thought of trying to find one that wasn't in a rough grouping to help us find it is daunting.

Lovely bit of history! I only know of it as being vaguely gentrified/Grenfell towers 🫣

Wow! You’d think he’d store some of his personal stuff and declutter it for marketing!

The only people who could afford to rent that are very, very rich people and I doubt many would be enamoured of the decor.

Wonder if it’s £26k a month (£312k a year!) because he wants to leave all his priceless junk things behind and thinks his tenant will be appreciative?

I sort fiction by colour, absolutely no problem finding anything. I don’t have the inclination to alphabetise them all.

And I have a decent education.

But maybe I am an embarrassment. I certainly don’t feel embarrassed.

I like it - look at all his treasures from his travels. Can't think he would let it out with all that personal stuff in it...

They have both a country house near Henley and this house too.

😄 no being overlooked

New money maybe... all the rest surely not

Good grief, I get anxiety just looking at that- there is clutter absolutely everywhere! That house would look so spacious and cool if only the mountains of clutter and crap were just not there