The welcome refurbishment that is soon to be carried out by owner Peter Borg-Neal at the Crown and Thistle Hotel in Abingdon was discussed in Gray Matter earlier in the year. It was also the subject of a fascinating background article by my colleague Reg Little in The Oxford Times’s features pages a few weeks ago.

In the course of its long history the hotel boasted visits by a number of people who might justly be considered world-class celebrities. One was Queen Victoria’s son Bertie, later HM King Edward VII who between 1859 and 1861 often drove over in his tandem with Lord Hamilton and other friends while he was an undergraduate at Christ Church. Actor Douglas Fairbanks Jnr was a later fan.

But the two who concern me today are John Ruskin and Margaret Thatcher. In 1871, while writing Fors Clavigera, Ruskin left London and took up residence at the hotel. While an undergraduate at Somerville, Thatcher visited it for dinner, as a prelude to an Oxford ball. Remembering that I had reviewed Charles Moore’s recent biography of Thatcher, Reg asked if he could borrow the book to check details of the occasion. I was happy to oblige and lugged the thing in for him.

Having made use of the book, Reg returned it to me. Finding I was out of the office, he popped it into my desk drawer. Facing him — to his amazement — as he pulled it open was Tim Hilton’s biography of Ruskin, the very book he needed next for his article. This, too, had come from my home for me to use in a piece about Ruskin’s friend Sir William Blake Richmond. Serendipity indeed.