This was one of my favourite summer reads — a real-life story from Hopwood DePree, a Hollywood producer, who decides to give up Tinseltown and relocate to the UK to renovate his ancestral home; a crumbling, 60-room, Grade II*-listed manor house near Rochdale. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but also a story about doing something unexpected and risky. It’s an edifying lesson in the joy of throwing caution to the wind.