Whenever Marcus Grenville came back from Westminster to spend a weekend in the constituency he liked to have all the family together for a meal in the Cadver on Friday night. He enjoyed sitting at the head of the table, listening to the chatter about the estate, holding forth about his week in the Commons, discreetly dropping names. More recently there had been some important names to drop. After years of being considered unfashionable, Marcus Grenville was coming back into favour. He had never been one of the forceful radicals in the party – not through principle but because he had misread the signs and failed to change his position in time. Now, however, it seemed that such radicalism was considered divisive. The party was looking to the solid, old-fashioned Tories, the Knights of the Shires, to hold it together. Marcus Grenville, it seemed, had been right all along.

When the tide began to turn Marcus Grenville emphasised his rural background assiduously. He suddenly developed an interest in the environment. With experience he had come to judge more accurately the direction the party was taking and was determined this time not to be left behind. He managed to get himself elected on to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and was delighted to accept the position of Director of Westmorland Wildlife Trust. There was some comment in the local press that a landowner whose main reputation in the county was as someone who shot and ate birds with obvious relish should be so closely allied with the conservation charities, but Marcus Grenville said that there was no contradiction.

‘It’s all a question of habitat management,’ he said easily when the question was put to him by a television reporter. ‘If we manage the uplands for grouse we encourage all the other birds that we love to see on the hills. The same goes for pheasant and woodland.’

His advisers had told him not to be too specific in any of his replies in case he made a mistake. There were so many enthusiastic amateurs out there, they said, birdwatchers and greens and cranks of every kind, just waiting for him to mix up his curlews and his corn buntings. Much better to be vague and statesmanlike.

The television reporter accepted his answer without question. Nobody asked about predator control, about pole traps and snares and mutilated birds of prey. Marcus Grenville was a rising star, a potential Minister of the Environment, and nobody wanted to offend him.