He joined the trust from roles at the Tate Britain and Manchester Art Gallery, and had been house and collections manager at Petworth since 2009. It was announced that his role was at risk in August 2020 and he was invited to apply for the new role of property curator.

He interviewed as the sole candidate but was told that he did not have “sufficient curatorial capability” for the job, which was on the same pay scale and incorporating many of the same duties as his old one.

Mr Loukes, whose family home on the grounds of Petworth House came with the job, was shocked. He had organised “ambitious art exhibitions” that were a first for the National Trust and had achieved both national acclaim and clear profits of about £1 million.

This was unusual, he said, particularly in a property where he had seen hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on projects which had amounted to virtually nothing.

An internal appeal found that his interview had produced a “perverse outcome” and the decision was overturned.

However, to his “amazement”, despite addressing all the negative feedback, he failed a second interview, scoring even lower marks. This time, he was told that he was not capable of attracting “new and different audiences”.

Just the year before, he had been asked to write for the trust’s annual staff journal about his successes, an article ironically headlined “New audiences for old art”.

Lord and Lady Egremont immediately employed him as the curator of the private, much larger, collection at Petworth and found his family new accommodation within the grounds.

However, he remains “utterly baffled” as to why he was treated in this way, particularly as his redundancy came at a “considerable financial cost to the National Trust because of my substantial settlement”.

He remains unclear on how they plan to attract new audiences, and is confused over why he lost his job when it became more curatorial as that was exactly what he had been pushing during a decade in the role.