Have I seen the stately home 'Gosford Park' before

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Wrotham Park

A.� If there is a sense of deja vu when you Gosford Park,�that is because you have probably seen that house before in many other guises.

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The film, directed by Robert Altman, is set at Wrotham Park, the ancestral home of Robert Byng. It is a Palladian home in Hertfordshire, described by an American critic as "an incomprehensible level of absolute perfection". It regularly appears in film and television series. The house featured in Bridget Jones's Diary, starring Rene Zellweger; the Stephen Fry film Peter's Friends; Lady Chatterley's Lover, starring Silvia Kristel; and�the Sigourney Weaver movie Half Moon Street. It also provided the setting for the�TV productions Love In A Cold Climate, The Cazelets and Victoria and Albert.

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Q.� What is Gosford Park about

A.� It's part-murder mystery, part-dissection of the English class system with a glittering cast. Starring Michael Gambon as Sir William McCordle and Kristin Scott Thomas as his younger wife, Lady Sylvia, the film is set in 1932 at at English country estate, where guests and their servants gather for a shooting weekend. Among the big box-office names are Dame Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, Derek Jacobi and - back at Wrotham Park to investigate the murder, Stephen Fry. The film has opened to rave reviews in America. The tale is told from the point of view of the servants below the stairs.

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Q. Why did the owner want to keep the location of the house a secret

A.� Wrotham Park (pronounced Rootham) provides the perfect backdrop to dramas focusing on upper class etiquette and intrigue. But the owner, who inherited the house from his ancestor Admiral John Byng, who built the house in 1754, says the place in a private home. Castle Howard appeared in the 1980s series Brideshead Revisited and was overwhelmed by visitors.

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Q.� With which�film did Robert Altman make his name

A.� Altman was the man who made M*A*S*H (1970), the anarchic black comedy which was one of the films that came to define the Vietnam generation in America. Nashville (1975) is the film widely acknowledged as Altman's masterpiece, the story of 26 character searching for the American Dream as they struggled to become Country and Western stars. His darkest hour came in 1980 when he made Popeye, his last Hollywood studio-backed film, with Robin Williams and Shelley Duval. A year later he made The Player, a satire on Hollywood in which Tim Robbins plays a movie producer on the make.

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By Katharine MacColl