Royalty, housebuilders, and the need for a little imagination

An unlikely alliance between Prince Charles and a disgruntled housebuilder is highlighting the need for better-quality homes.

Prince Charles © Kirsty O'Connor - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prince Charles: scourge of the dodgy housebuilder
(Image credit: Prince Charles © Kirsty O'Connor - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

One of the joys of reading all the papers every week is that you pick up the little stories created by the big stories. My favourite this week is that of Guy Warren of Evergreen Homes. He is irritated. Very. Why? The (biggish) story about the super-keen Remainers who apparently recorded a row between Boris Johnson and his girlfriend through the wall of her flat offends him. Not because he is anti-nosy parkering, or even because he disapproves of the making of the private public (the neighbours gave the recording to the papers). It is because he worked on the flat in question and knows "that the level of insulation and the quality of materials we use would have made recording of this alleged argument impossible." To suggest otherwise suggests the quality of his workmanship is not what he wants it to be.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.