I can’t write in peace if neighbours build £30k wine cellar, says Wild Swans author
SoME 20 million readers snapped up copies of her gripping autobiographical epic Wild Swans.
But fans of the 1991 publishing phenomenon may have to wait a little longer for the latest book by acclaimed author Jung Chang. For the best-selling writer says she will struggle to concentrate if her neighbours get the go-ahead for ‘purely selfish’ plans to build a £30,000 wine cellar with enough room for more than 1,000 bottles.
She hit out at the couple next door, who both work in banking, saying their ‘desire to store large amounts of alcohol’ could not justify the ‘misery’ caused to others.
In a strongly-worded objection to the plans for the 9ft deep spiral chamber, the 65-year-old claimed it presented a ‘new and further threat’ to the stability of her prop-
‘Enough to get the whole street drunk’
erty in London’s affluent Notting Hill. She told town hall planners that she and her husband, historian and author Jon Halliday, had already been hit by continuous building work as the neighbours have been granted extensive planning permission at their £6million, four-storey house.
‘This new intrusion not only threatens to endanger our house, but further to extend the already brutally long period during which we will be deprived of our right to peace and quiet, and to work undisturbed,’ she added. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China traced Miss Chang’s family’s fortunes in 20th- century China, and became the biggest grossing non-fiction paperback.
But she warned that the building work would jeopardise her new book, which focuses on Sun Yatsen, the ‘father’ of modern China.
She told the London Evening Standard: ‘My husband and I are both writers working from home, where we have all our research and reference books. We can’t work anywhere else.
‘The disruption from the noise and the vibration will be intolerable, and will really jeopardise our hopes of delivering our next books on time.’ Documents show that Commerzbank employee Chadi Semaan and his wife Amelie, an executive director at JP Morgan, were given consent in 2014 to build a ‘mega-basement’ and the work is understood to be ongoing.
Miss Chang wrote to planners at Kensington and Chelsea council, saying: ‘The desire to store large amounts of alcohol is not an adequate excuse for prolonging the misery of others, and degrading the environment with more noise, more dust, more dirt, and more vibration. There must be some principle of proportionality.’
Mr Halliday said the need for a cellar to ‘hold enough wine to get the whole street drunk many times over’ was disproportionate to the disruption on his home. The spiral cellar would be accessed via a wooden trap door. Made of concrete, the structure has a waterproof lining to keep bottles damp- proof and resistant to temperature changes and vibrations.
Several other residents have also objected to the plan, calling it ‘frivolous or surreptitious’. But Spiral Cellars – the firm installing the wine store – said the excavation work involved is ‘not significant’.
And town hall planners say the scheme is not a basement development and have recommended it for approval.