The Cotswolds home of the meanest quiz show host in television history is up for sale

One year when I was at school, my English teacher set a summer homework task: to read The Go-Between, by LP Hartley.

I only remember two things about the book. The first was that as soon as we were given our dog-eared copies, we all set about 'improving' the cover to make the author's name become J.R. Hartley (if you know, you know). The second is the novel's opening line: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

I never actually got beyond that line (one of the most famous openings in literature), but neither have I forgotten it — and I was reminded of it again today by reading that when the journalist and TV presenter Anne Robinson got her first proper job in journalism, by way of congratulation her mother sent her on her way to Fleet Street with a fur coat and a convertible MG. When I started in journalism four decades after Robinson, all I got from my mum were worried comments about what a precarious existence it would be, and how I should start driving a taxi at night and get some shifts pulling pints to tide me over when it inevitably all went wrong.

Well, Robinson's mother was spot on, because it was the start of a glittering career. While the budding reporter might have been gifted the car and the coat, everything else she earned for herself as she blazed a trail through a string of senior roles at newspapers including The Sunday Times and the Daily Mail before moving into television and becoming a household name. The latter era started with viewer-feedback show Points of View, moved on to consumer affairs show Watchdog, and finally, triumphantly, peaked with a long spell as the ultimate Bad Cop quiz show host on the BBC's show The Weakest Link. Caustic, rude, yet with a twinkle in her eye, Robinson became iconic in a role which she truly made her own, spawning dozens of international versions —, not least a highly-lucrative US edition featuring Robinson herself.

Throughout all that fame and fortune (which allowed her to buy a house in the Hamptons, among other places), she's called the Cotswolds home for 40 years. Now in her 80s, she is moving away, to a place overlooking Hyde Park that's close to her daughter. And that means her home in a village near Cirencester, Willamoor Barn, is now up for sale, with Butler Sherborn quoting £4.25 million.

The presenter bought Willamoor Barn 20 years ago after owning a couple of other properties in the area, and has done a huge amount to it — work, she says, that desperately needed doing. 'The inside, recently converted, was hideous,' she wrote of the place in a recent article in the Daily Telegraph. 'But its land and the views were breathtaking.'

Having bought the place soon after breaking up with her second husband, John Penrose, everything that's in Willamoor Barn now is Robinson's vision.

'Now I was on my own, without his eye or impeccable taste,' she continued in the piece. 'The barn was Grade-II listed, but I ripped out the tacky interior, installed several bathrooms, and filled it with my pictures and books. If you’ve got enough art and books, you don’t need an interior designer.'

The pictures speak for themselves: the ceilings are lofty and there are four reception rooms, seven bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Dating originally from the 1800s, the property and an adjoining cottage sit in the Coln Valley at Hatherop, with Cirencester only a short drive away.

The barn sits in 4½ acres of gardens and grounds — plenty of space to roam, relax and soak up the peace and beauty of this Cotswolds haven.

It is reached via secure gates, a driveway and ample parking for several cars.

Willamoor Barn is for sale through Butler Sherborn — see more pictures and details.