Authors’ photographs tend to be a rich source of entertainment for anyone who knows the subjects in the flesh, as they rarely bear any noticeable resemblance to the bloated monster hiding away in some room that stinks of coffee, tapping away at the keyboard. And no matter how many layers of bluff and double bluff an author thinks he or she can hide behind, the picture they choose for their book’s back flap never fails to reveal their vanity. Oh, I’ve said it before, but what fun it is to laugh at people. Isn't everyone silly?

The most excruciating pictures are obviously the ones in which the author is looking intense and mystical, trying, by the tilt of his eyebrow, to communicate his superior grasp of the unbearable lightness of the long-distance runner/length of time it takes for Godot to tip up — or whatnot. More common, and always good for a giggle, are the photographs in which the subject tries to look alluring.

As it happens, the picture they had used on the back of my previous literary oeuvres had to be jettisoned for the last one. What had once been flattering and vaguely embarrassing had, over the years, become preposterously flattering and, at worst, actually quite painful. People weren’t even bothering to wait until I was out of earshot before they started sniggering. As for the picture that graces this page, I’ll leave those who know me to make their own judgment.

I suppose it’s pretty obvious where I’m going with this. It turns out the camera does almost nothing but lie. Broad Town Farmhouse, on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, is a Grade II-listed early-17th-century house, on the market for £650,000. It’s beautiful — ancient and delightfully cranky — but there’s no point pretending that it wouldn’t benefit from new carpets and a lick of paint.

Just under 4,000 sq ft, with an unfortunate 1970s conservatory haphazardly attached to the back, it’s an unpretentious five-bedroom cottage with an overgrown garden and floors that slope — downstairs because it was originally built as a cow shed; upstairs because it was built an awfully long time ago.

Yet when, bloated and stinking of coffee, I settled at my keyboard to write about the place, I took a look at the sales brochure and felt something quite close to a panic attack. Before me was an array of photographs of sleek and shiny rooms I was convinced I had never set eyes on before. In fact, I wondered if the estate agents had mistakenly sent me photographs of the interior of a completely different property.

It was the same house, minute inspection revealed. Only in the pictures, it was tidy. Gone were the books, coffee cups and newspapers on every surface; invisible, the ancient dog-pee stain on the carpet; banished, the crumpled trousers on the bedroom floor. Which is all very well — I don’t like pee stains and crumpled trousers any more than the next person — but along the way something magical about the house got lost.

The ancient sloping flagstone floors look like factory tiles. The beautiful oak panelling in the upstairs hall resembles a school PE department’s pinboard. The photographs make the house appear neither mystical nor alluring, just incredibly boring.

“People pay to get this sort of literary patina,” the owner, author Frances Welsh, explains from her spot on the dog-pee stain, which I think she’s trying to cover with her foot. “It’s a lifestyle thing.”

She cleverly diverts my attention from the heap-of-trousers literary patina towards the literary patina featuring fine photographs and signed editions (including several by Joseph Conrad and one by Reggie Kray).

“And that,” she says, kicking aside a dusty-looking painting leaning against a door in the hall, “that’s our Monet. Or we thought it was. We found it in a cupboard. But actually the man from Christie’s said not . . .”

Welsh and her husband, Craig Brown, are both writers; as was thelast-but-one owner, Geoffrey Grigson, who lived here with his famous cooking wife, Jane, and famous cooking daughter, Sophie, until he died in 1985. The house still has a second kitchen, in which the Grigson ladies honed their skills. And on the far garden wall, beside abandoned croquet hoops and mallets, stands a plaque with one of Geoffrey’s poems inscribed. It’s about a tree, the top of which can be spotted (due to recent border changes) in the next-door neighbour’s garden.

Prospective buyers might be pleased to learn that the aforementioned literary patina, dubious Monet, croquet mallets and dog pee included, will all be gone with the current incumbents.

The literary heritage, however, is embedded in the walls. It’s a wonderful, magical old house. And, unlike most authors, significantly more alluring than its photograph.

Broad Town Farmhouse, Wiltshire, £650,000

What is it? A five-bedroom 17th-century cottage

Where is it? On the edge of the Marlborough Downs

Who is selling it? Carter Jonas; 01672 514916, carterjonas.co.uk

Selling your house? Think it could stand up to Daisy’s all-seeing eye?

E-mail daisy.waugh@sunday-times.co.uk

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

• First-time buyer

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers