Literature Network » Horace Walpole

Mansion's near miss.(Letter to the Editor)

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From: The Daily Mail (London, England)
Date: 20060202
Author:

David HORACE Walpole's Strawberry Hill gothic mansion wasn't bombed in World War II - had it been, it would have come down like a house of cards.

But incendiaries did gut the roof of a new wing, not far from the house.

The mansion had a close escape, however, in 1944 when a shot- down German bomber narrowly missed the tower - beneath which I and other students were watching the raid - and crashed across the Thames on Ham Common.

It was at Strawberry Hill that Walpole's pet cat drowned in a large Chinese goldfish bowl, inspiring his friend, the poet Thomas Gray, to ...

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