Once a woman has given you her heart, you can never get rid of the rest of her.

Marlborough's reward from a grateful nation was to be a splendid country seat and the Duke himself chose fellow Kit-Cat John Vanbrugh to be the architect. Voltaire who visited Blenheim Palace in the autumn of 1727 described it as 'a great mass of stone with neither charm nor taste' and thought that if the apartments 'were but as spacious as the walls thick the house would be commodious enough'. Windows were to adorn the facades as well as light the interior.

Sir John Vanbrugh (pron. He was knighted in 1714. His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays and jarred conservative opinions on the subject.