The room reveals itself gradually as the visitor lingers. The books, the papers and carefully ordered desks tell of a hard-working statesman with a thirst for knowledge and a deep love of culture.
But it is in the personal objects and features that a warmer side of the man emerges: the axes in the fireplace that he used for chopping wood as he cleared his mind; a hedgehog paperweight, the prominence of which must mean it has long-forgotten value; pencil marks on the wall recording the heights of his children as they grew.
This weekend, festival-goers and day visitors will be treated to a rare chance to visit William Gladstone’s study – his “temple of peace”, preserved as he left it when he died in 1898 – at his family home on the Hawarden estate in north Wales.
“I see new things every time I come in,” said Tara Gladstone, a great-great-great-granddaughter of the 19th-century Liberal prime minister and the director of this weekend’s Camp Good Life festival. “The longer you spend in it, the more you see.”
Only this week she had come across a letter announcing her ancestor’s death. “It says Mr Gladstone passed away peacefully. It must have been written by a trustee or private secretary.”
She loves the axe collection. “That was his big stress release. He saw it as a form of useful exercise,” she said. The family still collect axes. She has two, and her father, Charlie, has quite a selection. “We’ve picked it up and run with it,” she said.
The room is in a corner of the Gladstone house, an 18th-century building with a gothic exterior and Georgian interiors, just off the drawing room, which is still used by the politician’s descendants.
As you walk in, you cannot miss Gladstone’s modestly proportioned “political desk”, which has views across a lily pond up to a ruined 14th-century castle keep. Behind it is a cupboard packed with unused Downing Street stationery still neatly wrapped in brown paper packages. On the desk, along with writing implements and notepaper, is that intriguing hedgehog.
In the centre of the room is another desk where Gladstone used to do non-political work – his translations, his personal business and so on. But he could not have escaped politics entirely here, for a bust of Gladstone’s political adversary Benjamin Disraeli seems to glower down.
Also present when the Guardian was invited in this week was Louisa Yates, the director of collections and research at Gladstone’s Library, built in the village of Hawarden after Gladstone’s death to house thousands of volumes he bequeathed.
Yates has been in the room only a handful of times and was delighted to spot a copy of the pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt’s picture The Light of the World above the political desk. It shows the figure of Jesus preparing to knock on an overgrown and long-unopened door.
But it was the books that most interested her. She spotted a copy of Robinson Crusoe and a volume titled Glass in the Old World. “Why would he have that? But I’m glad he did,” she said.
Gladstone moved thousands of books in a wheelbarrow over to a corrugated iron shed that was the forerunner to the permanent Gladstone Library. “The books that remained here are really meaningful,” Yates said. “These are the ones he kept.”
Shortly after entering the room, Yates mentioned that she did not know where Gladstone’s copies of Alfred Tennyson’s work was – and had wondered about them. “We know they knew each other, so he must have had them.” Later she found the volumes. “There they are!” she exclaimed. “That shows how much there is still to be discovered here.”
The festival will feature a live show by the singer-songwriter Cherry Ghost and an appearance by the Band Pres Llareggub, known for combining brass and hip-hop. There will be talks on the future shape of Wales, and a teahouse has been set aside as a space for those who want to spend time remembering the Queen.
Visitors are encouraged to bring along dogs, and a canine manifesto has been produced. It reads: “We believe in liberty for all dogs; the right to attend our festival and to be cared for as welcome guests.”
Tara Gladstone said dogs would not be allowed into the study, but she was not worried that human festival-goers might trample mud into the room. “People are very respectful. We hope they will come and enjoy it. It’s such a wonderful place.”
Tickets, including day passes, are available at the Good Life Society.
