Indeed, on oil drilling, pollution control, global warming and timber policy, Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have offered starkly different views.
Some crouch on the ruins, struggling to keep warm by burning the timber of their devastated homes.
There are still flower-covered cottages in timber and warm stone, but a high-speed roadway lies a few hundred yards to the south, and the place is joined to the unmemorable town of Maidenhead by a haphazard urban sprawl.
It is also cleverly ventilated, cool air rising gently from thousands of slats in the timber floor, warming as it rises to the roof, before being expelled.
Cold-climate gardeners who have learned to love "Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs" will groan at the news that the redoubtable Michael A. Dirr has published DIRR'S TREES AND SHRUBS FOR WARM CLIMATES: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Timber, $69.95).
The interiors will be a series of modern but warm spaces, with touches like timber-paneled walls, a minimal style with hints of chinoiserie, and funky accents like Gio Ponti chairs and sofas by Antonio Citterio.
It supplies all the signifiers of a certain kind of modest Englishness (cricket on the green, warm beer in pubs, half-timber, bit of thatch, gentle wooded hills) a short hop from the capital (and, for those slebs, the private jet at Northolt airfield).
Webber, under the timber beams in her warm and dry sitting room, agrees: "We feel much better".
David A. Francko explains how to push the limits in any zone in his new book, "Palms Won't Grow Here and Other Myths: Warm-Climate Plants for Cooler Areas" (Timber Press, $28).
