'He might have skipped from the deliberately spartan fence – a sturdier barrier would have spoilt the view – down the narrow track to a shallow valley of oak, hawthorn and sycamore. He could have picked elderberries, cobnuts, even sloes, or scrambled to the crest of the adjoining slope to be beckoned by the tumbling eastern foothills of the Chilterns. Such was EM Forster's love of the floating carpet of countryside stretching north from his childhood home in Stevenage, that he described it as "the loveliest in England". Here, he was inspired to write the masterpiece, Howards End: he lived at Rooksnest, the setting for the book.'