This story came out of King Lear and rollicking house prices in Britain.

Nothing divides families as completely as a legacy squabbled over. Good kind friends can become avaricious and  spiteful when confronted with money to divide among themselves. For lots of families their inheritance comes from their parent’s houses, their tiny kingdoms and I thought how like Lear it all was, how avarice brings out an ugly, unfamiliar sides in all of us. The fact that property prices are rising so fast in parts of the UK ups the stakes, literally. Enormous, unthinkable amount of money can be involved and families can be ripped apart by the house they grew up in, the houses that their parents worked hard to buy so that they would have something to leave.

It could have been called ‘Legacy’ but that doesn’t connote stabbing and decay and inexplicable fires just as well, does it?