If you visit Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, where Pride and Predjudice was filmed and Mr Darcy lived - that is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire, ever since he decided that he wanted a palace there. There was a village there, but the villagers were all 'relocated'.

The story has many precedents. At least nowadays there seems to be some sort of legal framework to dispute the right of the rich and powerful, or plain malicious.

Pilger is a talented writer. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes not. By and large he is unsympathetic to the view, or pretends to be unaware that America is constantly engaged in military struggle to maintain its position of pre-eminence in the world, and that American democracy is the last best hope of everybody.