Actress Caroline Quentin has revealed she no longer intends to buy a home, after she and her husband Sam Farmer downsized from their six-bedroom Devon farmhouse to a rented cottage in Somerset. The Men Behaving Badly star, 66, said the move came once their two children had left home, and that maintaining the farmhouse's sprawling grounds had become overwhelming, leaving her happier with a smaller, more manageable garden.

Quentin told Gardens Illustrated that her old two-acre vegetable garden, two-acre orchard and pool were "exhausting" to keep up, and that she and Farmer have been settled in Somerset for just over a year with no plans to buy again. She also told Saga Magazine she had deliberately sold off many possessions, including a large art collection and jewellery, two years ago, and separately disclosed that she has been accepted onto a postgraduate diploma in the history of art at the Courtauld Institute, having left school at 16 with only a couple of O-levels.