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Tom Whipple Profile picture
@whippletom
Jul 23, 2024 • 17 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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I am now going to begin a periodic thread of castles on rightmove I would like to buy that I consider underpriced. I reserve the right to include non-castles if they, say, have their own chapel with frescoes, or several suits of armour. 1/
11th Century "farmhouse" with "small church"

£900k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/147…
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Paduan castle. Benefits from access to golf courses, and reasonable views.

£830k
rightmove.co.uk/properties/145…
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Piedmont castle. Previous owner wholly lacking in taste and slept on a mattress. But redeemable. £1.4 mill rightmove.co.uk/properties/137…


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"farmhouse"

(with chapel)

rightmove.co.uk/properties/149…
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7 bedroom casle. Battlements, turrets, but lacks own moat - making do instead with nearby river.

rightmove.co.uk/properties/145…
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Summer residence of the Savoy Royal Family, £600k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/147…
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"Monumental XV century palace," Treviso, £1.1m

rightmove.co.uk/properties/147…
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Right, moving to the Pyrenees. A note, before I continue,: this thread is a fantasy, not an invitation to talk about damp proof coursing and French property taxes. I will periodically tap this sign.
Anyway. Waterfront chateau, £1m, benefits from dragon gargoyles, extra mansion in grounds

rightmove.co.uk/properties/150…

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Not really a castle but claims to be. Still, at £700k can't complain. Image
12th century home. Comes with lots of other homes. Orangery is extra. £700k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/149…
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Not a castle. More a village. Comes with view of a mini-cathedral. Also appears to come with ownership of a mini-cathedral. £700k. 15 bedrooms, plus a 16th "cardinal's bedroom"

rightmove.co.uk/properties/150…

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Right. I am, by my calculations, roughly three percent through the major castle-producing regions of Europe. Onto the midi-pyrenees.

Excellent turrets, still not sure about the defensive qualities of this 13th century number. But good value at £1.3m

rightmove.co.uk/properties/149…
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Not merely a castle, an entire island too. Hopefully without insurance responsibility for the bridge. £600k rightmove.co.uk/properties/149…
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Seen better days. Or, as the agent puts it, "its authentic and rustic parquet floors, are still witnesses today of an Eternal Art of Living!"

But looks exactly as a French chateau should. £660k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/864…
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Not clear if the tapestry is included. But the pigeonnier, which is apparently a building rather than an elderly retainer who looks after the pigeons, is. £615k rightmove.co.uk/properties/148…
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More from @whippletom

Tom Whipple Profile picture
Dec 29, 2024
President Carter's greatest legacy could well have come after his presidency.

When he left office, he decided to eradicate a disease. In the 1980s, millions of people a year were infected with guinea worm - a horrible parasite. 1/x Image
You get infected from drinking contaminated water, the parasite grows inside you, then emerges - a metre long. It is horribly painful and debilitating.

Carter first saw a guinea worm on a trip to Africa, post-presidency...
“We were in a clearing in the jungle … and I saw a pretty young woman standing there holding a baby in her right arm.” He went to ask its name.

"It was not a baby but her right breast, which was more than a foot long, and it had a Guinea worm emerging from the nipple”
Read 8 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 27, 2024
This is the story of one of the greatest intelligence coups in history. It begins in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, one wintry night in 1939.

A middle aged man went to reception and asked, could he borrow a typewriter? 🧵

amazon.co.uk/Battle-Beams-s…
Image
The man was Hans Ferdinand Mayer, a German businessman with the sort of boringly-corporate job that rarely invited further questions. He had arranged his work trip here, in the months before the invasion of Norway, especially.

He put on gloves, went upstairs, and began to type. Image
It seems unlikely that any of those in the lobby that night noticed him. Less likely still that they realised they had witnessed perhaps the most significant act of treachery of the war.

Mayer was head of the Siemens research laboratory, and he hated the Nazis. Image
Read 24 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 22, 2024
On the longest night of the year, I'm thinking of a mad Dane called Thomas Sneum, 83 years ago, 1,000ft up above the North Sea, climbing out onto the wing of his antique biplane.

In a war notable for daring escapes, his strikes me as among the most daring - and consequential 1/ Image
Sneum was a Danish air force pilot. And he was not a sensible man.

When war broke out, he ran to his plane and was furious to find Denmark had surrendered. His plane, a biplane, had already been disabled.

This saved his life - it was no match for an Me109. But he was cross Image
His first scheme was to kill Himmler with a longbow. He spent days practicing shooting birds out of the sky in preparation for a visit by the SS chief.

But the visit was cancelled. Image
Read 19 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Jun 6, 2024
80 years ago, a great armada left Britain for France. In the sky, swarms of planes took off in the gloaming, bound for the Reich.

Both were the result of months of planning, carrying technology years in development.

And they're not what you are thinking of. 1/x Image
The boats weren't going to Normandy. The planes were not dropping paratroopers behind the beaches. In fact, they were dropping scarecrows.

Churchill famously said "In wartime, truth should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"

This was the final bodyguard. Image
Over the preceding months, 1,668 sorties had been launched against coastal radar. The cost had been eye-watering, and the bravery humbling. On one occasion, a doomed plane rammed the radar: Image
Read 12 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
May 7, 2024
38 years ago a woman in Coventry sent a letter to some scientists. That letter went on to be the most important in Alzheimer's research. Last year, I met Carol Jennings, who wrote it. 1/

thetimes.co.uk/article/e78c47…
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Carol's letter was prompted by her dad. He had got Alzheimer's, far too early. So had some of his siblings. So, in fact, had a lot of people in her family. She was told Alzheimer's wasn't genetic; she didn't believe it. "Please contact me, if you think we should be of help.”
The scientists, at Imperial, did contact her. “Really big families are helpful,” Alison Goate, who was part of that team, told me. “It was pretty clear, even from the nuclear family, there was something going on.”

They analysed genetic samples. This was laborious Image
Read 17 tweets
Tom Whipple Profile picture
Nov 20, 2023
October 25, 2020, from Vallance diary: "PM meeting - begins to argue for letting it rip. Saying yes there will be more casualties but so be it - 'they have had a good innings'" Image
It's important to note, says Vallance, "the next day he might have asked for no deaths at all"
Indeed, a bit later, PM in a different mood.

"Says, 'We need local lockdowns fast' 'Foot to the throttle' 'accelerate' He is SO inconsistent" Image
Read 6 tweets

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