Fiona Bruce's Britain: Polesden Lacey, Surrey To visit Polesden Lacey, her estate in Surrey, is to step into the world of an Edwardian power broker. She was illegitimate, the daughter of a servant, and her eventual wealth came from trade. But she was a shameless snob, uninterested in anyone who wasn't royal, rich or influential. She collected people as single-mindedly as she collected diamonds, Fabergé, Meissen and art. Margaret Greville's story begins with her father, the millionaire Scottish brewer William McEwan, and his affair with Helen Anderson, a domestic servant. When Helen was pregnant, the story goes that McEwan moved her to London, accompanied by one of his brewery workers who also happened to have the surname Anderson. This saved Helen's reputation and gave the impression of legitimacy to Margaret, born in 1863. Some years later, mother and daughter returned to be close to McEwan in Edinburgh, but it wasn't until 20 years later that he and Helen felt they could marry without scandal. When McEwan died he left his only daughter a fortune worth £65 million today. Once she had collected a suitably high-society husband in the form of Ronnie Greville, Maggie, as she was known to her friends, could launch herself into society, and Polesden Lacey provided the means. The house was designed for entertaining, and her parties filled the society columns. Step into the central hall, and as you put on a thoughtfully supplied gramophone record you can conjure up the scene; the guests, often including a prime minister, other politicians, statesmen, industrialists, actors and a sprinkling of royalty, would assemble to await their hostess. At 6pm precisely, to the strains of Noël Coward's greatest hits, Maggie would make a dramatic entrance down the staircase and sweep them into the gold saloon. There they would admire the panelling lifted straight out of a 17th-century palazzo. The many mirrors would reflect the dazzling crystal chandeliers and walls festooned with gleaming gold leaf. Maggie loved it. Some guests were less appreciative, describing it as, "a room of quite exceptional hideousness" and "like an extremely expensive bordello." To my mind, it's so madly over the top that it's fabulous. Maggie had taste, and she displayed it throughout her home in her fine collections of Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, her antique silver, the French and lacquered furniture, the 17th-century Flemish paintings and her tiny Fabergé animals with jewelled eyes. But she bought her taste wholesale. She cut a swath through 2,000 years of cultural history, buying anything that caught her magpie eye, and if it was a bit bling, so much the better. Money was no object when it came to making her guests comfortable. The bedrooms had telephones and en-suite bathrooms, almost unheard- of at the time. The baths had no taps: the water rose from the bottom so that there would be no noisy splashing. You can read details of who came to dinner and what was on the menu in the meticulously maintained dinner book. As was the fashion at the time, the menus were in French and a meal could stretch to 12 courses. Judging by what was on offer, I shouldn't be surprised if a stay at Polesden Lacey was accompanied by a bout of violent indigestion. For Maggie, royalty made the best house guests. Such was her hunger for HRH that she and her husband were known spitefully not as the Grevilles but the Grovels. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were regular visitors, even taking their honeymoon at Polesden as Duke and Duchess of York. They must have loved the house, because Maggie promised to leave it to them in her will. The discovery on Maggie's death that this wealthiest of widows had changed her mind and left the house to the nation instead came as a disappointment to the Queen. Writing to the King, she put a brave face on it: "Polesden she left to the National Trust... I'm not sure this isn't a very good idea because it is a difficult place to keep up, terribly expensive and needing a millionaire owner... this, darling, is all I know... perhaps it is just as well, things being as they are, that she has done this." Mind you, they didn't do too badly. Maggie left them her fabulous collection of diamond jewellery, including a necklace with stones the size of gobstoppers and a whopping tiara, now worn by the Duchess of Cornwall. "Most people leave their money to the poor, I intend to leave mine to the rich," Maggie always said, and she was as good as her word. But when you step into her home and walk around her grounds you can, for a few brief hours, feel like the richest of house guests in the charmed circle of this shrewd, vulgar, snobbish but always entertaining hostess. Polesden Lacey, Great Bookham, near Dorking, Surrey (01372 452048; nationaltrust.org.uk/polesden-lacey). Grounds open daily, year round. From November to February the house is open on Saturdays and Sundays only, for guided tours. Admission to house and gardens costs £10.80 adult, £5.40 child, £27 family, with extra charges in December for Christmas events. From March 1, the house opens daily. More from Fiona Bruce Fiona Bruce's Britain: Scone Palace, Scotland Fiona Bruce's Britain: Towneley Hall, Lancashire Fiona Bruce's Britain: Sudbury, Suffolk Fiona Bruce's Britain: the Historic Dockyard Chatham Fiona Bruce's Britain: Wightwick Manor