Diary

Alison Light

Fortitude Cottage in Old Portsmouth, so the publicity tells me, is named after HMS Fortitude, a 74-gun ‘ship of the line’ that was part of the fleet which took on the French in the Napoleonic Wars. A tall bow-fronted house, it’s a bed and breakfast done out ‘boutique-style’, with white duvets, chocolate suede furnishings and modern ceramics. It was built on the site of a 16th-century cottage burned down in the Blitz and was recently renamed in keeping with the cobbled streets and battlements of the old garrison town. Across Portsmouth Harbour there’s a glimpse of Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, one of the tourist attractions in the ‘historic dockyard’. Much more dramatic, as I sit at the breakfast table, is the Isle of Wight ferry, lumbering into view between the narrow streets like a great white whale.