When I was a teenager my father came home one day with a dismantled Yorkshire range which he'd managed to buy from a refuse yard somewhere

I felt like the house was watching me. I hadn't quite been accepted and I was being kept at a distance.

These areas are like wounds, draining the house of its energy and making it sick.

I fell in love with No 19 Starý Týn the first time I stayed here alone: it was like I had come home.