Whoever takes on this house – middle-eastern prince, rock star, industrialist, dot.com billionnaire - has to be an enthusiast. You can’t do much by way of alterations to a Grade One listed house when the interiors are as important as this. And there are oddities: you have quite a lot of bathrooms, for instance, each with a fireplace and a green-mosaic floor, but also with the original, not especially wonderful, baths and plumbing. Though there is a large bronze shower cage, with a dozen taps for different functions, that looks like a piece of sci-fi torture equipment. You do also have a dozen or so bedrooms, all at present used as offices and storage, and all the usual rooms for the latest generation of servants. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the world of Britain’s rich since Edwardian times.

The agents say rather plaintively that this house was hard to price. One's heart bleeds for them. Agents never know quite what to do with maverick – or even ever so slightly different from the norm – architecture. And how exactly do you cost out all those irreplaceable tiles and mosaic work? Still, £20m is a nice round figure, one that I could have come up with myself if pushed. Would it not be good, however, if this house were not sold privately, but were bought to be opened for the public? True, with prices in the Holland Park area now hitting this level, I can’t quite see the National Trust getting down its piggy bank for this one. But if some fabulously rich collector were to buy it and gift it to the Trust, or the nation? One can dream.