<p>The Portrait is set mainly in the late summer/early autumn 1928, and opens in France where Richard Anderson, in his mid-thirties, a wealthy publisher and writer is researching for a book he is writing on his home, Shearwater Manor, a 17th century manor house in Berkshire. The house was very run down when Richard first saw it five years earlier, having been empty for almost one hundred years, since the death of Thomas Courtney, he young squire....