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It was inMPYour browser does not support the element. Admiralty House that the famous phrase was first spoken. On May 13th 1940 Winston Churchill called his cabinet there. “I have nothing to offer,” he said, “but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Earlier, worrying about the prospect of war, Neville Chamberlain walked in the bluebell wood at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house in Buckinghamshire. In the Falklands war Margaret Thatcher decided to sink the , an Argentine warship, while sitting in a chair in Chequers: she would later point it out, proudly, to guests.Chequers and Chevening. Dorneywood and Admiralty House. The names of grace-and-favour residences pepper 20th-century British political history like estates in a Jane Austen novel. Everything about them feels archaic, from their architecture—Chequers is Elizabethan; Chevening, a grand house in Kent, was designed by Inigo Jones—to that courtly phrase “grace-and-favour”. The animating ideal behind the houses was also archaic. In the early 1900s British politics was becoming more democratic (which was generally considered a good thing) and British politicians were becoming more demotic (which was generally frowned upon). Members of the English aristocracy—patrician and patriarchal—stepped in, bequeathing their homes to the nation to allow s occasionally to live in a style to which they were not accustomed. This would be , borrowed. As the 1917 bequest of Chequers put it, the more prime ministers enjoyed its fresh air “the more sanely will they rule”. Recent occupants have tested this theory.There are nine buildings that serve as “ministerial residences”, to give them their official title. Politicians both wince at them—it is “mildly embarrassing”, says Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign secretary who had the run of Chevening, “like going back 200 years”—and relish them. At the top of government you “have virtually no free time”, says Sir Malcolm Rifkind, another former foreign secretary. But at least at Chevening you have no time somewhere with lawns, a lake and a maze. It is, he says “hugely therapeutic”.Grace-and-favour houses are so desirable that there are graceless struggles over them. Chequers is reserved for the prime minister. As for the rest, although there are traditions about who receives what—foreign secretaries tend to get Chevening for schmoozing—they are awarded at the prime minister’s discretion. (Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, recently lost out to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, over the keys to Dorneywood, a pile in Berkshire.) Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, avoided getting involved in such battles since the winner “won’t thank you”, the loser “certainly will blame you” and it was all “well above my pay grade”.Getting to them can be as tricky as getting them. Chequers is down a warren of country lanes so narrow that when Lord O’Donnell took the cabinet there on an awayday, the coach “got stuck”. Someone had to get out and move flowerpots. “It wasn’t”, says Lord O’Donnell, “my finest hour.” The security takes some getting used to. When Hugo Rifkind, a writer and Sir Malcolm’s son, was staying at Chevening once, he was given a lift home by a friend. Mr Rifkind had told him where the house was but not what it was. “Why”, his friend asked, “are we surrounded by men with guns?”Outside, the houses are breathtaking. Inside they can be rather more drab. The overall aesthetic is of a country-house hotel that has overdone the plug sockets. Sir Tony Blair called them “anaemic”. What character they have is not always what you’d want. There are some “very old-fashioned toilets”, says Lord O’Donnell. In Chequers the death mask of Oliver Cromwell hangs above the fireplace, one of those little touches that helps a house feel like a home.For ministers with young families, they can feel odd. You “rattle around a bit,” says Mr Hunt, “like living in Downton Abbey”. Some manage to relax more than others. When Charles Moore, a political author, visited Boris Johnson at Chequers, Mr Johnson’s son “put his head between his legs” and pulled faces at them. “It was very jolly.” Sir Malcolm ran a tighter ship. When Thatcher came to stay at Chevening, Hugo and his sister were invited to eat with her. “I dressed in my best clothes for breakfast, as one does,” recalls the younger Rifkind.However easily you adapt to the lifestyle, it pays not to become too accustomed to it. Sir Malcolm welcomed friends to a party at Chevening by telling them that his new home “goes with the job. And when I say it ‘goes with the job’, I mean it: when the job goes, it goes.”
