First Sentence

"One shouldn't necessarily trust numbers, still less celebrity, yet when such disparate figures as George Sand, Frederic Chopin, Ruben Dari Miguel de Unamuno, Robert Graves, Ava Gardner, Freya Stark, King Juan Carlos, John Noakes, Peter Stringfellow, Richard Branson, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Michael Douglas, Claudia Schiffer, Ralph Schumacher, Caroline Corr and Bob Geldof, choose to spend anything from a prolonged season to a lifetime in a given place, there must be something going on that's worth investigating."