> ...that is always on

with predictable results w.r.t. quality-of-living when your house already has central heating.

Agas used to be a very rural middle-class thing: it was how I imagine most countryside homes' heating and cooking worked, and it scaled from a modestly-sized cosy cottage to being in expansive stately homes. But postwar, and especially since the 1960s, Agas are just a status-symbol appliance to me.

Like, in North America, you know you've made it when you have a Wolf range and a Subzero fridge in your kitchen. In the UK, it's when you've got an Aga.

...probably because the only comfortable way to run the thing is by also having central air-conditioning installed and running full-blast while you use the thing.

Still a class signifier amongst a certain type of Brit (particularly if it's been disposed of as a climate sacrifice)

In the early 90s a friend bought a five or six chamber Aga. He had lived in a house in Europe that had had one and he loved it. It cost a fortune to acquire and to install as the house had to be structurally reinforced to accommodate the weight of the oven. I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature across the whole oven. Each of the cooking chambers had a different temperature.

I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

   a subgenre of the family saga genre of literature ... typically interpreted to refer to "a tale of illicit rumpy-pumpy in the countryside" ... it offers a "gingham-checked world" associated with "thatched English villages" and "ladies in floral dresses".

Also the author of a well known book, “Confessions of An Advertising Man”.

OCR errors?