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Is champagne a wine region or a state of mind? The small bubbles have a way of getting into the bloodstream and the imagination, creating a slightly euphoric sensation which encourages pleasant chatter. But who put the sparkling genie in the bottle? Who pioneered the intricate process of secondary fermentation in a bottle strong enough to withstand six atmospheres of pressure and contains all those wonderful bubbles of CO2, about 20 million per bottle?  In France, it is claimed that it was Dom Perignon (1638-1715), ‘Come quickly. I am tasting the stars,’ he is supposed to have said. Very romantic, a convenient sales pitch. The only problem is that the

My mother passed away last year and it fell to me to sort out her house. Returning from four years in Russia and the Caucasus, I moved into her Suffolk home to get it ready for selling. There was a huge amount to do. Alongside organising my mother’s headstone – no small or hasty business – there was an entire house and a life to sort through. This involved going through endless knick-knacks, glasses, crockery, clothes – and 15 or more rubble sacks of papers and old letters. The last was both cathartic and disconcerting. These are written relics of a life that existed before I came along, one that