Now even drawing-room greens accept that conserving wildlife requires that the people living nearby have a stake in its preservation.

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On the first floor, an old-fashioned drawing room is lined with sagging shelves holding her extensive collection of books novels, biographies, poetry and a roaring fire beckons.

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Immerse yourself in surroundings that evoke a more genteel era and watch treasures from the archives in the glass orangerie (modelled on Crystal Palace), silent films accompanied by live orchestration in the neo-classical drawing room or take part in a foley workshop (recording sound effects) in the crumbling stable block.

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Selected visitors to her business in an 18th-century house in Dublin would be received in her drawing room with its yellow silk wall-coverings and its framed photographs of famous people.

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Their solar panel system is integrated with the lights via the room controller, drawing power from man-made and natural light.

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But she's taken care to bring along a small Peter Beard photograph with a wooden frame that sits on a shelf and a Francis Bacon self-portrait drawing that's hanging in the living room.

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