The Conservative Party faces a mutiny in Metroland

The roof terrace of High & Over offers a fine view, overlooking the lawns, the round swimming pool and the rolling Chiltern hills beyond. The house was built for the young family of Bernard Ashmole, an archaeologist, in 1931. The aim was a Roman villa in the modernist style—all straight lines and gleaming white—and within an easy train ride, from Amersham station, of an office in Bloomsbury. Locals called it the aeroplane house: the concrete canopies make it look like a biplane coming in to land. Country Life, a magazine, declared it exhilarating: a house that “says frankly ‘I am the home of a twentieth century family, that loves air and sunlight and open country.’” Katherina Harlow, the current owner, threw opera parties at the house, but she is selling up for something smaller (the asking price is £3m, or $3.9m).