Up early? It depends entirely on the programme for the day. When you get to 90, the seven days tend to blur into each other. Some Sundays, I get up early. Others I don’t. Typically, though, I will get up at 9am, wash, shave, consult my iPhone for messages and read the news.
Sunday breakfast? Same as I have everyday: a glass of orange juice, Shredded Wheat, half a grapefruit and toast with butter. I’ll also have a cup of coffee, which is done by magic in a machine.
Sunday papers? Over breakfast, I read the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Observer. I read the Sunday Telegraph after lunch. I always expect to read some propaganda and distortion about Brexit in the papers, because there are papers who run propaganda campaigns about Europe, day in, day out. It causes me infinite despair.
Sunday church? Every third Sunday I go to a Church of England service in my local church. It’s a great historic experience because the building dates back to the 11th century. It’s very much a church for the local community – it’s small and we know everybody there.
Sunday lunch? Invariably a roast of some sort with Yorkshire puddings and a glass of wine. A classic English lunch. My wife and I don’t cook it, we have help. We eat at 1.15pm and quite frequently have guests. We see a lot of our children and our nine grandchildren, – it could be them or it could be friends from the worlds of gardening or politics.
Sunday tipple? I have a glass of wine at lunch and two glasses of wine at dinner every day – typically Chardonnay or Sauvignon, but it depends on what I’m eating.
Sunday siesta? Yes, I’ll sleep for about an hour and wake up feeling great. I’ve always had a lot of sleep, all my life. I can sleep for – nine to 10 hours each day.
Favourite activity? I have three dogs – a labrador called Fred, a dachshund called Fritz, and a West Highland called Fergus – and they need exercise. We have a very large 70-acre garden, which is open to the public, where 80 species of birds have been recorded. So I’ll often take the dogs out for a walk in my garden, using my golf buggy, and then do some gardening and listen to the bullfinches.
Thenford Arboretum, Lord Heseltine’s garden, which features 700 varieties of snowdrops, is now open to the public (thenfordarboretum.com)
