With 500 shards of pottery alone to be washed, catalogued and interpreted, Ms Charlton is still in the midst of completing a "giant jigsaw puzzle" about the house's history.

BBC: Unlocking secrets from Jane Austen's Steventon home

Since Josh Bolten took over as chief of staff, the White House has seen the appointment of a Wall Street giant, Hank Paulson, to run the Treasury, the arrival of a slick media man, Tony Snow, to run public relations, and advances in Iraq.

ECONOMIST: A sudden rush of better news, and not entirely fortuitous

He grew up near Los Angeles, his family's house literally underneath the giant white letter sign atop the Hollywood hills.

CNN: FCC chairman Kennard on high-tech crusade

The big exception, of course, is Finnish phone giant Nokia, which has bet its smartphone house on the Microsoft software.

BBC: The smartphone battle: Meet the top contestants

It's the giant shade garden that lines a hillside behind my house.

WSJ: It's Better in the Shade

But it must be galling to know that after he spent nearly five vain years entangled with the French bureaucracy, Paris granted permission to Arnault to build a cultural complex to house the collection owned by his luxury goods giant, LVMH Group.

FORBES: Why the man who controls Gucci had to have his own museum.

The giant Mizuho financial group, for instance, which brings together the house banks of three keiretsu (corporate groups), contains plenty of affiliated life insurers and non-life companies, whose fate is still uncertain.

ECONOMIST: Japanese insurers

Always fearful of trees falling on the house, we were spectators to the macabre dance of the surrounding woods, swaying like a giant mosh pit.

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

The search giant opened its Campus London coworking space one year ago and in that time has come to permanently house over 100 fledgling companies and hosted more than 850 events for 60, 000 guests, according to the company.

FORBES: Google's Tech City Draws Hordes