Charles Spencer is riding out lockdown in the comfy, if not cosy, confines of home on his estate, Althorp in Northamptonshire. Charles believes a house steeped in history should be shared with the community – in part through the literary festival he hosts there. With that interrupted, he has turned Althorp’s ample kitchens over to a local chef to prepare meals for local NHS workers. He tells Paul Blezard that even those facing gruesome executions in his English Civil War history books, Killers Of The King and To Catch A King, would find reasons to be sanguine in the days before their deaths.