How many homes does one person deserve? As many as can be summoned by scent: the must of a brown Queen Anne, the reek of cinder blocks stained by swaggering boys, and the strange mix of curry and dishwater that is the hallway to the house on Charlotte Despard.

She was a novelist, our Charlotte, and a Catholic too (chaste as ice, pure as snow)–but most importantly a suffragette. She came up with the idea of chaining oneself to gates, and did so. She was sixty-three.

Charlotte loved Battersea. That’s easy enough. Just live there, and then try to leave.