Rampling Gate. It was so real to us in the old pictures, rising like a fairy-tale castle out of its own dark wood. A wilderness of gables and chimneys between those two immense towers, grey stone walls mantled in ivy, mullioned windows reflecting the drifting clouds.

But why had Father never taken us there? And why, on his deathbed, had he told my brother that Rampling Gate must be torn down, stone by stone? ” I should have done it, Richard,” he said. “But I was born in that house, as my father was, and his father before him. You must do it now, Richard. It has no claim on you. Tear it down.”

After having read Shirley Jackson – The Haunting Of Hill House  and The Turn of the Screw * Henry James, I decided to give another Gothic novel a go. And I do mean Gothic. It features central themes like isolation, fear of the unknown, a large manor with a dark secret, all while covered in dust and creaky stairs.

When we reached the massive front door Richard and I were spirited into the great hall by the tiny figure of the blind housekeeper Mrs Blessington, our footfalls echoing loudly on the marble tile, and our eyes dazzled by the dusty shafts of light that fell on the long oak table and its heavily carved chairs, on the sombre tapestries that stirred ever so slightly against the soaring walls.