By choosing Dashwood as Sense and Sensibility’s central family name, Jane Austen drew on the high-profile real Dashwoods, including their West Wycombe ‘Hell-Fire Club’ notoriety. The 4th Baronet’s time at his Bourton-on-the-Hill hunting lodge spanned Jane’s adult life, with Warren Hastings (British-India’s first Governor-General) at Daylesford, and her close relatives at Adlestrop, nearby. This tightly-grouped Cotswold social network included the East India Company Cockerell family, whose extraordinary Mughal-style house and gardens at Sezincote involved the glittering design...