A 15-bedroom villa that used to belong to the family of Pope Leo XII can be yours for a mere £626,000. The Villa Leone, in Castiglioni, Marche, was once the family hunting lodge; it has its own private chapel dating to the late 18th/ early 19th century “with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, oval windows and some baroque decorations”. The three-storey villa (with a farmhouse which is “requiring restoration”) would, the agents say, be “ideal as a bed and breakfast or an impressive residence”.
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When former prime minister Theresa May unveiled a statue of Lady Astor in Plymouth last week, she thought everyone would be pleased. “When Nancy Astor became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, our country and our democracy were changed for the better,” Mrs May tweeted, saying she was “proud” to unveil the statue. But the American-born socialite Lady Astor was also, as Mrs May’s critics were quick to point out, vociferously anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. She once accused the Foreign Office of being manipulated by Catholics, whom she loathed, and she discouraged the hiring of Catholics and Jews by the Observer newspaper, which was owned by her husband.
