So here's novelist Angela Huth giving some tips to Telegraph readers about how to sell your home:

Avoid estate agents. Take your own photographs and employ your own designer to produce the brochure. Avoid "estate agentese". Big up the garden. Point out architectural features. Don't physically nudge the buyer. Oh yeah, and don't have bad taste (Huth doesn't like "new developments with rural names", "barn conversions with faux marble kitchens", "furniture placed around the edge of the room", "depressing" urban features in country houses...). The trick is to have exactly the same taste as Huth ("nothing later than Victorian, large windows, no beams"), in other words good taste. So her place in Oxfordshire ("often referred to as the most desirable house in Oxford") must have been snapped up. Right? Wrong. It's still on the market... after one year and counting.