On a nippy November afternoon, I arrived in the small town of Chester. A taxi ride of 20 minutes took me to Hawarden in Wales. The driver stopped just outside what looked like a small manor house. I had arrived in Gladstone's Library, founded by the Victorian statesman and politician William Ewart Gladstone. I had come to stay in a place with its curved stairwell, crimson drawing room warmed by a fire, high ceilings and of course, the library that felt like a set for a grand home out of Jane Austen's Emma.