(Very) modern manners

WHILE many ‘snowflakes’ whinged about the heat last week, the Earl of Leicester is taking advantage of the warming climate. Thomas Coke, 57, who hosts the Queen’s New Year’s Day shoot at his stately home near Sandringham, is to plant red wine vines in his refurbished winery, in the walled garden at the Holkham estate in Norfolk. ‘Red wine grown in this country is usually rather filthy stuff,’ the so-called ‘Turnip toff’ tells me. ‘We grow a passable white already, an all right rose, but, hopefully, the way the sun shines into the new winery at the back will bring some flavour out of the red grapes.’

Every cloud has a silver lining . . .