Rex Whistler, Baroness Von Buxhoeveen & Endless Summer.

My mother takes tea very seriously, and she normally enjoys it in her drawing room from a tray on her lap whilst seated on the pink sofa  beside the fire. If she is joined by guests, it is arranged in the dining room, in which my parents installed the panels by Rex Whistler that had hung first in my grandmother's boudoir and later in the drawing room of Britwell. The teapot was always heated first, and for many years you could spot my mother straining the tea into a saucer for her dachshund. "No one enjoys leaves in their tea," she would say.

After the artist, Rex Whistler, completed the grisaille, turquoise, and silver panels, my grandmother, Edwina Mountbatten, brought the butler in to show them off. He nodded approvingly as he looked around, until his eye caught sight of Father Time, lounging naked against the clock. And then he saw the depiction of my grandmother as Venus, also rather naked, sleeping on the other side. "Oh, no, my Ladyship," said the butler, "this will never do."…..