Blenheim Palace has been invaded and captured. The Chinese political activist and artist Ai Weiwei has arrived, at least in spirit; he’s under house arrest by the government in China. His art works have taken over the space of Blenheim and encourage people to see the Palace differently. It’s almost as though the guard at the gate has invited the enemy inside to put on a deliberate display of defiance.

Ai Weiwei got into the Palace under the auspices of a new organisation, the Blenheim Art Foundation, brainchild of Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough. “Blenheim had got frozen in time; we stopped adding to it, following a mentality that was epitomised by Downton Abbey, whereby you dig a trench and attempt to defend the line.

“What we are trying to do with the Art Foundation is to inspire great contemporary artists to reach new levels of creativity by doing an exhibition here and to make this house relevant once again in what we used to be: great patrons of art.

“I have a problem with the idea that contemporary art can only be presented in a white box. I think it makes art much more interesting to present it within a continuum.”

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So let me take you on this journey. At the private view I took a wrong turn and saw the exhibition backwards.

I started at the end, the Long Library, an opulent room that runs the length of the Palace and houses an organ of huge proportions where an athletic musician was playing Bach, Beethoven and Mozart with hands and feet.

On the walls were a series of 40 huge photographs. In the background of each one was a different world landmark – the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Tate Modern, Tiananmen Square, the White House – and in the foreground was the image of a hand extended, giving a sign, not like Churchill’s famous two fingered victory sign, but just one finger, the middle one, in a universal sign of “unhappiness”.

To top it off, all the photos were exhibited on their sides so the viewer had to bend over in a contorted position to see them from the point of view of the photographer.

I noticed a table in the middle of the room with a collection of more hands, only these were Spencer-Churchill family photos of the Duke shaking hands with David Cameron, Gorbachev, Ronald Regan and Bill Clinton.

This was my introduction to the Ai Weiwei exhibition and it was ridiculous, diabolical, thoughtful and hilarious, but no one else was even smiling. Perhaps they were still shell shocked by seeing the whole exhibition already.

Since Blenheim is Winston Churchill’s birthplace, his bedroom has been preserved intact, but Ai Weiwei’s wooden “Handcuffs” have been clipped to the top of Churchill’s bed post: a sly nod to the sexual shenanigans of British aristocrats or a reminder of the metal pair of handcuffs used on Ai Weiwei during his detention in 2011 by the Chinese government when he was interrogated over 50 times in 81 days? In the Red Drawing Room a wave of 2,300 small, porcelain crabs like pulses of fire emerges from the fireplace in hues of orange, scarlet, brown and underbelly white. They look elegant on the classical swirls of the rose carpet and complement the reds in the furniture and wall paper and the Titian hues in the gold frames of centuries-old portraits.

It’s a dialogue between artefacts so new and so distant in time that brings out the power in each of them.

The guides entered into the spirit and quietly informed us that at night the crabs crawled around. Nobody laughed.

The Dining Room has a huge table and empty chairs and a circle of bronze, but gold plated, Zodiac animal heads supported by the bones of their beings, the spinal cords.

The exhibition notes indicate that these Zodiac animals derive from the fountain sculptures of the 18th Century Imperial Palace in Beijing which was torched and looted in 1860 by French and British soldiers. Ai Weiwei says “You can talk about the West taking away the Zodiac heads, yet the cultural revolution in China destroyed such items a hundred million times over, daily.” And yet the golden heads glare out at you with a reminder of Animal Farm and pig snouts in a trough in the main dining room of Blenheim Palace. It’s straight out of a Tim Burton film.

The final piece I saw on my backward tour was the first view of most people: the Giant Chandelier in the Great Entrance Hall. It is held by a brutal steel girder resting on the refined marble plinths at the top of the room.

This oversized image protrudes dangerously full-on into the well of the room which is cordoned off to protect viewers. The exhibition notes say it is “inspired by the ongoing building boom in Beijing, grandiose and flashy, reflecting the competitive drive among Beijing builders for ever greater opulence”. Or is it big-time bling that resonates with the rest of what stately houses in Britain do best?

Everyone I spoke with thought the Chandelier was not only beautiful, but devoid of Ai Weiwei’s subversive hallmark. Has he got away with it?

This exhibition is brilliant, thought provoking and challenging. It’s also a hoot.

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