All too common

Did English author Beatrix Potter but know it, she foresaw the dystopian future when she created voracious landowner Mr Tod, a tweedy fox, and the unwelcome visitor Tommy Brock, a disreputable rucksack-toting badger.

- Jane Clifton

The way modern Britons talk about the Cotswolds, you'd think the rascally fox and badger had now taken human form and were replicating their misdemeanours across the entire district with extreme prejudice. Insane house prices and undesirable incomers are, it is bitterly lamented, the Cotswolds' ruination. Yet tout le monde continue to visit.

Controversy over the deathless domestic and international popularity of the leafy, honey stone-built district reached vein-bursting heights during US Vice President JD Vance's visit this month for a family holiday. His 27-vehicle security motorcade struck some Brits as a graver travesty than when Mr McGregor's wife put Peter Rabbit's father in a pie.