On paper, Charlbury is everything the Cotswolds is supposed to be. Stone cottages the colour of anaemic butter. Sash windows in a riot of Farrow & Ball sage. A train station that survived the Beeching cuts and gets you to London in an hour.

‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how rough parts of Chipping Norton and Witney can be.’

It looks like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. And in many ways, it has worked hard to stay that way. While the setting – close to where US vice president JD Vance recently rented a manor house – may look like postcard England, locals say the reality, especially for those on the margins, is far more complicated.

‘There are three Charlburys,’ says the Reverend Fergus Butler-Gallie, the local vicar. ‘The Notting Hill set. T

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