Hughenden Manor was remodelled by Edward Buckston Lamb (1806–1869) and bought by Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), Earl of Beaconsfield, in 1847. Disraeli was a favourite of Queen Victoria and in an exceptional move she lunched with him, a lover of trees and books, at his retreat at Hughenden in 1877. It was inherited in 1892 by Disraeli’s nephew, Coningsby (1867–1936), named after one of his most successful novels, who vested the estate and contents in the Disraelian Society to preserve it for the nation. In 1947, after wartime occupation by the top-secret map-making unit of the Royal Engineers, it was transferred to the National Trust, which in 1983 restored it to how it had been in Disraeli’s day. The painting collection comprises mainly portraits, what Disraeli called his ‘Gallery of Affection’.