“He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself. The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn’t just about privacy, about an Englishman’s home – even a pebbledash semi – being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it.”
