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Hôtel Chateaubriand Paris +

We Don’t Have Beef

Hôtel Chateaubriand is the sister of Hôtel Washington in the golden triangle at the very heart of the French capital. Romain Rio Hotels, the best of Paris. They’re located off Champs Élysées. The 4th Edition of the Michelin Guide to Paris (1960) describes that most famous of avenues, “Leaving Clemenceau’s statue to the right in the square of that name, we cross the Avenues des Champs Élysées, and not without turning to enjoy the view towards the Invalides. To the left stands the Marigny Theatre built in the reign of Napoléon III. Close to this is La Bourse aux Timbres – the Stamp Market – where collectors meet on Thursdays and Saturdays.”

The Guide continues, “You pass a number of drinking fountains; these, like many others in Paris were the gift of a generous English philanthropist, Sir Richard Wallace (1818 to 1890), and are named after him. Sir Richard spent a number of years in Paris and gave away a large part of his fortune for charitable purposes. He was a popular respected figure, and received many honours both in France and in England. Turning to the right you follow the Avenue Gabriel opened in 1818. Shaded by magnificent trees, the gardens which you follow lie at the back of the handsome mansions of the Faubourg St Honoré. The first of these on your way is the Élysée. Its fine railings were wrought in 1905. To the right, there is an attempt at a natural garden; the paths meander between undulating lawns with trees rising here and there. To achieve this effect Haussmann cut down many of the fine rows of elms. Turn to the right when reaching the Concorde.”

And now for that heavenward grand tour of Le Chateaubriand, floor by floor, room by room. Deuxième sous sol: archives, bureaux, lingerie, vestiaire du personnel. Premier sous sol: bureau, chambre 10, cuisine, salle à manger. Rez de chaussee: accueil, chambre 20, chambre 30, hall d’entrée, jardinet du premier sous sol, petit salon, grand salon. Premier étage: chambres 101 de 105, jardin. Deuxième étage: chambres 201 de 205. Troisième étage: chambres 301 de 305. Quatrième étage: chambres 401 de 405. Cinquième étage: chambres 501 de 505, terrasse. Sixième étage: chambres 601 et 602.

The interior decoration of this fine Haussmann building isn’t for minimalists. It’s even more spruced up in the festive season. Romain Rio explains, “Like a score, Hôtel Chateaubriand draws harmony from every detail from the imposing chandelier in the patio to the velvet and crocodile lounge chairs in the sitting room… through the powder pink doors coming straight from a Venetian palace to the black fire surround from the palace of Versailles to the bull’s eye window… note the 18th century portraits, the collection of beetles… in this place I reinvent the story of each object, making it timeless yet wildly contemporary.”

The grilled and gated and gilded entrance hall leads into a spacious reception area linked to a basement dining room by a winding staircase overlooking the patio, or glazed courtyard, to the rear. A pair of antique doors opens into the lift: it’s like being encased in a beautiful wardrobe. Clive Staples Lewis would approve. Timber panelled walls and a trio of bowler hat lamps are reflected in a gilt framed hostess mirror. Soothing classical music serenades guests as they ascend – at least in this case – to the penthouse suite.

Ah the penthouse suite! Occupying the lion’s share of the top floor of a Haussmann building: this is what life’s all about. The walls are hung with stretched silk hand painted in places. An enormous gilt picture frame doubles as the bedhead of the equally enormous bed. The en suite bathroom is a pleasure of black marble with an electric shuttered window, not that you’d want to block the view spying on the mansarded neighbours opposite. Everybody in Paris is always saying “C’est la vie.” At Hôtel Chateaubriand it’s, “Vraiment, c’est la vie!”

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Architecture Design

Brighton East Sussex + Lavender’s Blue

Be Our One

A city of contrasts from the inland Galeed Strict Baptist Chapel to the seafront No Catch Vegan Fish and Chips.

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Architecture Design

Tullan Strand Bundoran Donegal + Lavender’s Blue

A Fantasia in the Icelandic Manner on Irish Themes

The Wild Atlantic Way lives up to its name. Next stop the Faroe Islands (800 kilometres to the north) then Iceland (1,100 kilometres northwest). The only access to its golden strand is down a rocky precipice before crossing a rivulet. The tide dramatically swoops in by dozens of metres every few seconds. Horses majestically gallop through the low waves with a backdrop of the shadowy Wardtown Castle. Raven haired surfers adventurously ride the crashing white waves. High above the beach, fairy bridges and a wishing chair are more than the stuff of legend. The outline of buildings follows the silhouetted mountainous scenery. Everything and everyone are all about wild abandon.

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Design

Boa Island + Lakes Fermanagh

Not the Giant’s Causeway

In the land of Lack and Garrison and Lusty Beg and Belleek and Mulleek and Boho (silent “ho”) lies Boa (silent “a”) Island. The road bisects the swan lakes.

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Park Chinois Restaurant Mayfair London +

Orient Impress

Twixtmas, the most delicious portmanteau since banoffee. It takes a lot to sway us away from our usual Chinese cuisine hideaway in Mayfair (Hakkasan) but the allure of another basement of delights on the far side of Sexy Fish (Park Chinois) proves too much. Macallan Highball, Moulin Rouge and Negroni de la Maison cocktails get the party going. Now that the short lived Duddell’s is history, Park Chinois could well be our second favourite Chinese restaurant in London.

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Downing College + University Arms Cambridge

What Has Been Will Be Again

The late David Watkin, Professor Emeritus of History of Architecture in the Department of History of Art at Cambridge University, was a super fan. He wrote at least two books on the architect: Quinlan Terry (2006) and Radical Classicism The Architecture of Quinlan Terry (2015).

Pastiche is a criticism often levelled at neoclassical architects but rarely at Modernist practitioners. Sammy Leslie, châtelaine of Castle Leslie, gives a sharp riposte to any suggestions of pastiche aimed at the traditionally designed houses by Dawson Stelfox of Consarc Design Group in the walled estate of her County Monaghan castle. “They’re original designs, not copies. For example, although they’re village houses, the bay window idea comes from the castle. The development is all about integration with the existing village. It’s contextual. These houses are like fine wine. They’ll get better with age. There’s a fine line between copying and adapting but we’ve gone for the latter.” And as Ecclesiastes 1:9 notes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Professor Watkin certainly believed in the aging Cabernet Sauvignon argument, and, evidently, the Oxford Comma. “Quinlan Terry notes that the Psalms are a patchwork of Moses and the Prophets; that in the New Testament the apostles constantly quote the Old Testament; and that Shakespeare can only be understood properly when one realises that he is frequently quoting earlier writers. Aristotle claimed in the Poetics that imitation, mimesis, is the common principle of all the poetic arts. He believed that the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood and distinguishes us from the animals. For him, poetry is the imitation of life through rhythm, language, and harmony. The inventive response to precedent as well as the role of imitation are demonstrated by the fact that three major works of Quinlan and Francis, Hanover Lodge, Kilboy, and Ferne Park, have all involved their making sympathetic yet imaginative and large scale responses to earlier buildings, which, in the case of Ferne, they had designed themselves.” Jeremy Musson admired Kilboy in Country Life (2016) “Kilboy is a masterpiece, a highly crafted interpretation of the Palladian tradition that cannot fail to impress.”

Critic Jonathan Meades as ever gets it right. He writes about the “worldwide scream of accusatory architects: ‘Pastiche!’” in his essay France in Pedro and Ricky Come Again (2021). “The architectural doxa decrees that pastiche is a Very Bad Thing Indeed. The collective convention forgets the history of architecture is the history of pastiche and theft: von Klenze’s Walhalla above the Danube is based on the Parthenon; G G Scott’s St Pancras borrows from Flemish cloth halls; Arras’s great squares are imitations of themselves.” And in his essay Obituaries in the same collection: “Architecture like poetry is founded in copyism and plagiarism – both vertical, looting the past; and horizontal, stealing from the present. The obscure past, of course, and the geographically distant present.”

Quinlan Terry has designed several infill buildings in the sedate setting of Downing College, Cambridge. David Watkin writes, “The Fellows of Downing College voted for the appraisal of Quinlan Terry’s Howard Building (1986 to 1989) in 1983, not so much because he promised classical forms, but because they were persuaded that any building by him would be solidly constructed and would have a long life. Cambridge was by now acutely aware of the structural and environmental faults of the structural and environmental failures that afflict High Tech modernist glass buildings – James Stirling’s famous History Faculty Building (1964 to 1967), for example, was visibly decaying and surrounded by a wire fence labelled ‘Dangerous Structure. Keep Out.’ Members of the History Faculty came within one vote of demolishing it and replacing it with something more sensible.”

But demolition of the prominent neoclassicist’s buildings has indeed occurred. Professor Watkin again, “Terry also provided Downing College with a modest, one storied, freestanding Junior Combination Room that resembles a garden pavilion, as well as Richmond House, a range of shops and offices that fits effortlessly into Regent Street, next to the college.” The three storey plus attics Richmond House on Regent Street backing onto the grounds of Downing College is safe for now. But the single storey Butterfield House as the Common Room became known as is for the chop. Inefficiency of volume is the justification. Kathryn Ferry notes in Bungalows (2014), “The first book specifically dedicated to bungalow design was published in 1891 by the architect Robert Alexander Briggs.” Architects of the moment Caruso St John have secured planning permission to replace the 1987 building with a larger three storey block. Caruso St John’s design is still inspired by William Wilkins’ college buildings but is a much more streamlined toned down lower key less prescriptive interpretation compared to its predecessor on this site. Unusually, the replacement stone faced building will incorporate a hardwood panelled pediment over the second floor.

Two presumably more permanent 20th century additions to Downing College are Howard Court and Maitland Robinson Library. Again, the Professor Emeritus is full of praise: “Terry’s Howard Court at Downing College, a three storied range of chambers 11 bays long, continues the Doric colonnade of the Howard Building at right angles to it but as an open internal passageway. Casement windows on the top storey echo those in the nearby buildings from 1930 to 1932 and 1950 to 1953 by Sir Herbert Baker and A T Scott. A generous building of Ketton stone with widely spaced windows below broadly projecting Tuscan eaves – a development of Terry’s houses in Frog Meadow in Dedham – Howard Court is popular with the undergraduates who live in it.”

“Terry built the square planned Maitland Robinson Library (1990 to 1992) at Downing College of loadbearing Ketton stone,” explains David Watkin. “Its many Grecian references remind one of Wilkins’s scholarly knowledge of Athenian architecture, and include a powerful Greek Doric portico inspired by the gateway into the Roman Agora (10 BC) in Athens, and Wilkins’s own unexecuted Greek Doric porter’s lodge for Downing College, inspired by the Propylaca in Athens (439 to 432 BC). Additionally, the portico of Terry’s library, especially in its relation to the rest of building, echoes Wilkins’s now demolished portico of about 1805 at Osberton Park in Nottinghamshire. The metopes in the Doric frieze of the library are filled with large scale carved symbols representing the subjects taught and studied in the college. The doorcase in the portico combines Greek work, including canted architraves, with references to Michelangelo’s elegant doorcase in his Medici Chapel in Florence (begun 1520). The capriccio of Athenian references includes the octagonal tower surmounting the library, inspired by the Tower of the Winds in Athens (1st century BC), and the eastern portico, which is indebted to the now destroyed Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus (319 BC) on the Acropolis. The top lit octagonal staircase hall contains panels of stucco decoration designed by Francis Terry and inspired by those of the Ata Pacia in Rome.” Andreas Papadakis writes in Classical Modern Architecture, 1997, “The entrance door is a combination of Greek key pattern with splayed architraves.”

He jumps to Quinlan Terry’s defence once more: “Criticism of the Howard Building came from the distinguished critic Gavin Stamp in the Architects’ Journal in March 1988, even though he had previously written in praise of Terry’s work in Architectural Digest. His condemnation of the handling of the classical language in the Howard Building and of its ‘sham’ features were refuted, respectively, in two accompanying essays by the distinguished historian Sir John Summerson, and by the architect Léon Krier. Summerson explained, ‘I had an opposite opinion to Stamp where the exterior is concerned. My own first view of the building gave me a rare shock of pleasure. Here was a façade with something to say in a language that I happen to understand and love. The general proportions and the distribution of openings seemed absolutely right: the Corinthian order took my fancy – it has been carefully studied.’ Krier claimed that ‘if applied universally, Stamp’s criticisms would indeed have to condemn the majority of classical buildings in Cambridge and the world. It is that kind of moralistic radicalism that established and maintains Modernism’s intolerant reign.’ Stamp’s article, and the essays by Summerson and Krier, were reprinted for an American audience in the journal Progressive Architecture, in July 1988.”

Opposite Richmond House and overlooking Parker’s Piece is the University Arms, one of few hotels in Cambridge. Neoclassical architect John Simpson and interior designer Martin Brudnizki, the latter best known for fitting out The Ivy restaurants, revamped an existing Victorian and Edwardian building that had 1960s extensions. John Simpson really came to the public’s attention, or at least the coffee table magazine reading public’s attention, in 1991 with the house he designed for his parents. Ashfold House near Cuckfield, West Sussex, popped up absolutely everywhere from House + Garden to the Daily Mail Book of Home Plans. Clive Aslet lavished praise on the villa; his opening line in Country Life was, “Ashfold House is everyone’s dream. Later in the decade, Andreas Papadakis describes the building as, “A small country house, compact and practical for everyday use, but with the grace and proportions of an 18th century residence.” It is something of a reduced cross between Pell Wall Hall and Pitzhanger Manor given a cloak of Palladianism. University Arms, with its bulky new porte cochère bulging onto Regent Street, is definitely more on the Quinlan Terry end of the stylistic spectrum than the Caruso St John end.

The best place to take in a panorama of Cambridge, old and new and somewhere in between, is from the 360 degree viewing platform on top of the 800 year old tower of Great St Mary’s University Church. Immediately below the parapets are The Guildhall, King’s College and Chapel, Michaelhouse Centre and the Wren Library. Downing College blends afar into the honeyed blur of the city.

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Chichester West Sussex +

Signs of the Times

On the eve of the 17th Sunday after Trinity, or as one entrant in the Visitors’ Book of the Pallant House Art Gallery put it, “37 days till Halloween”, we spend the day in Chichester. Pronounced “Chai-chester” if you are from Belfast (Chichester Street is one of the city’s main thoroughfares). Londoners put the hitch into “Chitch-ester”. The city is logically and legibly laid out: North, South, East and West Streets crisscross at Chichester Cross.

The laneways snaking round the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity are pure Miss Marple territory. The red brick Deanery with its façade spanning pediment gable is one of many historic residences under the shadow of the spire. The cathedral itself is an absolute medley of periods and styles with a very deliberate Romanesque vault system and simply divine medieval tracery. Recent additions include a portly stone head of The Queen, part cherub part gargoyle, looking down on commoners traipsing through the main entrance.

Every street is a revelation. There’s Chichester’s narrowest house at 6a North Pallant with its skinny one bay façade and entrance door squeezed to the left of the bay. Then there’s the Queen Anne townhouse reborn as the Pallant House Art Gallery. It has a smart restaurant in the 2006 wing designed by Sir Colin Wilson and Long + Kentish. A current exhibition of 80 miniature works of art by the likes of Damien Hirst, Augustus John, Paul Nash and Rachel Whiteread fills a model art gallery, an architectural maquette, with transparent gable end elevations designed by Wright + Wright architects.

There are wide townhouses of Henrietta Street Dublin proportions with double pile roofs and deep returns. There are white brick terraces with paired entrance doors. It rains, it shines, we come close to missing our train (The Foundry pub is temptingly close yet mercifully next to the railway station) all full of the joys of a day well spent. And everywhere in this most civilised of cities are enough signs of the historic times to compete with a Harry Styles song.

The plinth of the statue of St Richard Bishop of Chichester,1245 to 1253, near the entrance to the cathedral: “Thanks be to Thee my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which Thou has given me, for all the pains and insults which Thou hast borne for me. O Most Merciful Redeemer, friend and brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly and follow Thee more nearly.”

A plaque in the cathedral: “Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester 1955 to 1977, was in the forefront of the 20th century renaissance of church patronage of contemporary artists. As Vicar of St Matthew’s, Northampton, he had commissioned a ‘Mother and Child’ by Henry Moore and a ‘Crucifixion’ by Graham Sutherland. For Chichester he commissioned the Sutherland painting, the John Piper tapestry, the Marc Chagall window and copes by Ceri Richards. Hussey was responsible for introducing Geoffrey Clarke’s cast aluminium works such as the furniture in this chapel, the lectern at the shrine and the pulpit. He also commissioned major works of choral music including Berstein’s Chichester Psalms and Albright’s Chichester Mass. Hussey himself amassed an important collection of modern art which he left to the Pallant House Gallery. There may be seen sketches for the Piper tapestry and Feibusch’s Baptism of Christ, as well as another version of the Sutherland painting and works by others including Ivon Hitchens.”

The painting Noli me Tangere by Graham Sutherland, 1960, inside the cathedral: “This painting depicts the moment when Mary Magdalene finds the tomb of Christ empty, but encounters the resurrected Christ and mistakes Him for a gardener. Sutherland presented Dean Hussey with two paintings; Hussey selected the one he felt most appropriate for the cathedral setting, which features Christ in a gardener’s straw hat. The second painting remained in Hussey’s private collection, now at the Pallant House Gallery.”

The Chagall Window in the cathedral: “This window designed by Marc Chagall and made by Charles Marq was unveiled by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent and dedicated to the Bishop of Chichester at 12 noon on Friday, 6 October, 1978. It was commissioned by Dr Walter Hussey shortly before he retired as Dean. The theme of the window is Psalm 150: ‘O praise God in His holiness – Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.’ The triumphal quality of this chant is expressed by the dominance in the composition of the colour red (red on white, on green, on yellow) broken up by a certain number of green, blue and yellow blobs. This is the first time that Marc Chagall has conceived a subject composed entirely of small figures: it is the people in festive mood glorifying the Lord, exalting His greatness and His creation. The musicians are playing the instruments referred to in the Psalm: horn, drum, flutes, strings and cymbals. A man juxtaposed with an animal at the right hand edge of the composition holds open a little book, indicating that the word too participates in this hymn of praise. In the centre two figures hold up the seven branched candlestick, while David, author of the Psalm, crowns the whole composition playing upon his harp.”

Another 20th century insertion into the cathedral: “The High Altar and Piper Tapestry 1966. Considered the spiritual heart of a church, the High Altar represents the ‘holy table’, a sacred place for gifts and prayers to be offered to God. The tapestry, set behind the High Altar, was commissioned by Dean Hussey from the British artist John Piper and was installed in 1966. It consists of seven panels, each one metre wide and five metres high. Using bold colours and striking imagery the central subject is the Holy Trinity, to which the cathedral is dedicated.”

The most famous memorial in the cathedral: “The Arundel Tomb circa 1375. This tomb monument is widely identified as being that of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel (died 1376) and his second wife Eleanor of Lancaster (circa 1372). It was first erected at Lewes Priory and was moved to Chichester following the priory’s dissolution in 1537. The hand joining pose of the figures is rare and was restored in 1843 after much research. The tomb is best known today through Philip Larkin’s poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’ (1955).

One of our best architectural finds in Chichester: “Welcome to St John’s Chapel. This Grade I Listed Building is no longer used for regular worship but is one of over 330 churches in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust. Despite its nonconformist appearance St John’s Chapel is in fact Anglican. It was opened in 1813 to overcome the shortage of accommodation provided by the city’s seven tiny parish churches. It was not a parish church but a proprietary chapel which, although firmly part of the Church of England, was built and run as a commercial venture. Its Trustees, in addition to paying the Minister’s and organist’s salaries and keeping the building in repair, had to pay dividends to the shareholders and keeping the ‘business’ afloat was a constant struggle.”

“With no income from a parish or financial support from the Diocese the Trustees’ income had to come from sale and rent of pews and the generosity of the congregation. Worshipping at a proprietary chapel was an expensive alternative to a parish church! St John’s was designed by the London architect James Elmes (1782 to 1862) who carried out a body of work in and around Chichester between 1811 and 1814 when he was also surveyor to Chichester Cathedral. The wealthy bought or rented spacious box pews situated in and beneath the gallery. These pews were only accessible from the side porches. However the 1812 Act of Parliament authorising the chapel required at least 250 free seats to be provided for the use of the poor. These were open backed benches in the centre of the chapel and as they could only be reached from the front door the classes were kept strictly separated.”

“A three decker pulpit was a most essential attribute of a Georgian church or chapel and was used for the services of Morning and Evening Prayer. The lower desk was occupied by the Parish Clerk who had the job of leading the congregation in the responses and Psalms. The Minister would occupy the middle desk from which he would read the service but after the third collection and the prayers he would ascend the stairs to the pulpit to preach his sermon. From this vantage point he would have a good view of those in the gallery as well as those sitting below and could also watch the clock set in the west end gallery in order to time his sermon. The pulpit of St John’s is made of American black birch and was originally laid out on the more usual east west axis. At some time it was realigned north south and examination of the lower desk reveals the fact that there was originally a door on the north side.”

A jolly plaque over the front door of the Council House and Assembly Room, “Licensed in pursuance of Act of Parliament for music and dancing.” This building is one of the most architecturally important in Chichester: “The Council House was erected in 1731 by public subscription at a cost of £1,189. It was designed by Roger Morris (1695 to 1749), the architectural associate of the Earl of Pembroke, who, with the 3rd Earl of Burlington, was the leader of the Palladian movement which set the standards for nearly all English architecture in the second half of the 18th century. The Assembly Room was added to the east of the Council House from the designs of James Wyatt (1746 to 1813). It is approached from the landing of the Council House, through an anteroom, formerly a civic apartment. It is a spacious room of three bays lit by three windows. There are niches over the original fireplace.” And finally, a race down the ages of the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity.

  • 2025: To mark the 950th anniversary of the cathedral’s move from Selsey to its forever home, there will be a festival of music and art.
  • 2021: Lavender’s Blue make a pilgrimage to the oldest city in Sussex.
  • 1960s: Modern artworks by among others Ursula Benker-Schermer, Hans Feibusch and John Piper are commissioned.
  • 1930: St Richard’s shrine is restored.
  • 1866: The cathedral reopens after repair.
  • 1861: The tower and spire collapse.
  • 1660: Restoration begins on the cathedral.
  • 1642: Parliamentaries ransack the building during the English Civil War.
  • 1538: St Richard’s shrine is wrecked during the Reformation.
  • 1530: The large scale paintings by Lambert Barnard are completed.
  • 1400: The spire, cloisters and bell tower are constructed.
  • 1276: The body of St Richard is moved to the retroquire after being canonised by Pope Urban IV 14 years earlier.
  • 1100s: Much of the eastern end of the cathedral is destroyed by a series of fires.
  • 1108: The cathedral is consecrated.
  • 1075: The bishopric and cathedral are moved to Chichester and building work commences.
  • 681: The monastery founded by St Wilfried in Selsey becomes the first cathedral in Sussex.

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Ballyfin Laois + Lavender’s Blue

Haven is a Place on Earth

After Ladytown and Gingertown and before Demesne and Borris in Ossory. Past the ‘Squirrels Crossing’ sign next to Deadman’s Inn. Guided by 1,000 flickering lights, all the stars and planets aligning, we finally arrive at Ballyfin. Dawn is gone and noon is soon. Slowly, majestically, breathtakingly, theatrically, on adverb overload those black and golden gates glide back to reveal another world. To quote Elizabeth Bowen in her 1955 novel A World of Love: “a new world – painted, expectant, empty, intense.” A world of everything. She called these estates “house islands” in her 1942 autobiography Bowen’s Court and Seven Winters. Ballyfin’s walled demesne is more like a “house principality” with hundreds of newly planted trees, dozens of revived vistas and tens of augmented avenues. Two butlers and a manageress stand to welcoming attention on the wide steps of the house. Symmetrically. Later she will whisper “it’s because you love heritage” which is possibly the best excuse ever for a quadruple room upgrade. We’ve luxed out! Our car, keys, suitcases, worries disappear. All we are left with is our anticipatory sense of awe and a louche lust for life. And complimentary glasses of Champers.

There are no equals. Parallels don’t exist. Period. It’s Poles apart. Ballyfin loads the super into superlative. It sticks the hyper up hyperbole. Puts the eggs in ecstasy. And then there are those golf buggies lined up above the haha. Aha, pure unadulterated genius! Pray tell, channelling our outer Tamara in a Green Bugatti, how else are we to explore the 250 hectare estate? Zestfully zipping round from tower folly (lake to left) to picnic chalet (lake to right) to stable yard (lake above) to walled garden (lake below) to boathouse (oops lake straight ahead, all 11 hectares of it), Ballyfin is a deliriously glorious and indulgent playground for rich and cultured adults. This world is our oyster and nobody else’s. We’ve checked in; we’ve checked out. Naturally, on cue ducks waddle ‘cross the lawn to the fountain. A duck is the hotel motif. Ballyfin really is a haven for wild animals and Wild Geese and wild guests. On that (latter, louder) note, why does nowhere ever advertise for “noisy rooms”?

In the 1820s, Sir Charles Henry Coote commissioned multigenerational practice Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison to design a new house on his recently acquired estate. “The ubiquitous Sir Richard Morrison,” as Mark Girouard calls him in Town and Country, 1992. “The son went by the rather wonderful name Vitruvius,” Randal# McDonnell, Earl of Antrim, tells us. Absolutely everybody and we mean everybody raves about the result. Frank Keohane, author of the latest addition to The Buildings of Ireland series, Cork City and County, 2020, believes, “… the interiors are furnished to a degree of perfection and luxury that perhaps only the Morrisons could achieve at this period.” The Irish Architectural Archive (Nick Sheaff et al) published in its 1989 thesis on the Morrisons: “The grandeur and variety of the whole conception and the richness and quality of the decoration are unparalleled in Irish county house architecture.” What Francis Scott Fitzgerald calls “honeyed luxury” in his 1992 novella, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

Esteemed architect John O’Connell advised on heritage and conservation matters relating to the restoration and rejuvenation of Ballyfin. He relates, “Vitruvius was incredibly inspired by everything he saw, although he was frail – he had weak lungs and died aged 44. Ballyfin vies with Baronscourt in County Tyrone but outstrips it. The Cootes saw Emo Court, the neighbouring estate to theirs, and wanted that. They allowed the Morrisons free rein. Ballyfin is the equivalent of the Czar’s Palace with knobs on, the Villa d’Este of Ireland!” Henry James calls the Villa d’Este one of the “operatic palaces” in The Wings of the Dove, 1902. John notes, “As does happen, the Cootes fell on hard times.” The next owners, the quadruple barrelled Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley family, sold Ballyfin to the Patrician Brothers and after a few decades as a college, a shining Knight and a Madam (to borrow the title of an Irish Knight’s spouse) came to the rescue of the fading pile: Chicago businessman Fred Krehbiel and his Irish born wife Kay. Sadly, Mr Krehbiel passed away in June 2021. They were accompanied by a crack team of specialists, all top of their game, to achieve the greatest ever revival of an Irish country house. The nine year rebuilding took several years longer than the original construction period. “Fred and Kay travelled all the time,” remembers John, “and brought to Ballyfin all of their experiences. They bought really good paintings and furniture for the house. There’s a pair of mirrors by Robert Adam in the Saloon. For them, this larger investment was about the apotheosis of the big 19th century house.”

Of course, John led the brilliant restoration of Fota in County Cork, another Morrison house. Ballyfin is hewn from local Clonaslee sandstone. We recall Oscar Wilde in his 1882 essay The House Beautiful: “The use of the natural hues of stone is one of the real signs of proper architecture.” The reconfigured 20th century wing, part hidden from the avenue by an enormous holm oak tree, is of reconstituted stone. The entrance front of the main block is dominated by a three bay giant Ionic order portico; the rear, by a four bay pedimented breakfront. No boring white window frames here: dark stained timber window frames offer a monochromatic sharpness to the exterior as precise as an architectural print. It was Dorinda, Lady Dunleath, who first alerted us to the aesthetic superiority of dark window frames, referencing the National Trust village of Kearney a few kilometres south of Ballywalter Park on the Ards Peninsula, County Down. Five blind windows perfect the symmetry of Ballyfin’s façade.

A bookcase in the Library is jammed full of awards. Relais and Châteaux Garden Trophy 2014. Relais and Châteaux Heritage Trophy 2017. AA Hotel of the Year 2019. Travel and Leisure World’s Best Hotel Awards 2017, 2018, 2019 and… surely 2021! There have been successful Irish country house hotels before, but when it comes to Ballyfin, there have been no prequels. We idly wander through the chain of reception rooms; in The Diamond as Big as Ballyfin “the upholstery consisted of 1,000 minute and exquisite tapestries of silk, woven with jewels and embroideries, and set upon a background of cloth of gold”. Oscar Wilde again, “And now books: an old library is one of the most beautifully coloured things imaginable; the old colours are toned down and they are so well bound, for whatever is beautiful is well made.” One stack of books, a snoresville of Parliamentary Debates, isn’t what it seems: the titles are merely book spines concealing a jib door into the Conservatory. Marlfield House in Gorey, County Wexford, finally has some competition; talented architect Alfred Cochrane’s glass act being the defining country house transparent moment of the 20th century. Some visual jokes are more recent like the suit of armour sporting Vilebrequin boxer shorts on a half landing.

The vastness of the estate swallows everyone up. Deep in the Irish midlands, we’re lost below the shadowy climbs of Slieve Bloom. John observes, “Jim Reynolds designed an incredibly well prepared landscape in the context of John Sutherland’s 19th century parkland.” This includes the extraordinary cascade flowing down the hill from John’s Claudian temple to the terrace in front of the garden elevation of the main block. “Claude Lorrain was a great 17th century French painter who created huge enigmatic landscapes embracing the whole of the Greek and Roman worlds,” John reckons. “The Claudian landscape became the ideal 18th century English landscape – spare, Protestant-like.” Only at pre dinner drinks will we meet the Irish, American and French occupants of the other 19 guest rooms. Thankfully everyone has rigidly stuck to Oscar Wilde’s maxim: “People should not mar beautiful surroundings by gloomy dress…”

The hotel years. What gives? Nothing. Not us. We’re staying put. Or rather going Coote Suite tout suite. Holed up in the Sir Charles Coote State Room thank you very much, which we’re reliably informed is the only ground floor suite in the main house (the Viceroy Room is 20th century). And boy, do we only do main house. It’s taken us quite a few generations to escape the servants’ wing and we’re certainly not voluntarily returning there anytime soon. Ballyfin mostly doesn’t do modern, phew. An ancient stone sphinx guards our bedroom window (not that we’re completely averse to night time visitors). We’re in the noisy room (us, not the environs). How many doors does a suite need? There’s the jib door below the flying staircase landing pushing through the wall thickness to the main bedroom door; curved doors to the cloakroom and bathroom lobby; then a cast iron door creaking into the bathroom. “This bedroom was Sir Charles’ office and the bathroom was his gun room,” explains John. “The arrangement was very strategically planned so that he could watch over the avenue and the yard.” The ceiling is a riot of much arching, apsing, cornicing, coffering, coving, dentilling, detailing, resetting and vaulting. A handwritten card from General Manager Peter White is propped on top of the Fornasetti set of drawers. The fourposter is a plotted knotted tented oriented plateau of impossible indelicacies! Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love is relevant, “The fourposter, of a frame immense, was overdraped with more of the damask stuff…” A huge marble bath with bronze lion head taps (Drummonds naturally, a reminder of home) overlooks the lower ground floor courtyard with its ever flowing fountain. Draped over the bath are the heaviest white towels and bathrobes imaginable.

Candlelit dinner is served in the Dining Room. Wow! Weyhey! Yeah! Suddenly, unexpectedly, the cascade beyond our window erupts and alights in a flow of waves and an impossibly surreal pyrotechnic display of Jamesian Catherine wheels. The John O’Connell Claudian Temple is ablaze! Nymphs and dervishes, thankfully no banshees or hobgoblins, flitter across the shadowy striped perfected lawn. A custom designed pescatarian tasting menu, sealed with fresh (mind your own) bees’ wax from the far side of the Kitchen Garden wall, guides us along the gastronomic voyage of a lifetime. There will be no sequels. In something akin to our 55 a day, breathe in: Chilled Apple Gazpacho (garden mint, apple compressed in lime); Lightly Cured Trout (garden turnips, lemon, hazelnut); Salad of Ballyfin Seasons; Cod Cooked in Rapeseed Oil (black olive, saffron, fennel); Roast Garden Swede (lentils, herb purée, black garlic); Cashel Blue (onion and sesame sable, Ballyfin honeycomb); Vanilla and Mascarpone Parfait (toasted macadamia, honey truffle). Breathe out.

Wild Geese Wine is a speciality of the Dining Room. Ballyfin abounds with informative historical snippets and the Wine List is no exception.  “Many émigrés achieved fame and distinction fighting in the armies of France and Spain, others as scholars in Irish colleges from Rome to Prague to Seville. Others, still, entered the wine trade in Bordeaux and established great châteaux many of which still bear their names.” John Gebbie summarises the Flight of the Earls, as the enforced emigration is called, in his 1968 Historical Survey of a Parish of Omagh, “The O’Neill lands of this and other parts had become forfeit to the English king, James I, by the flight of the O’Neill leader, Hugh, to Italy, 1607, with consequent abandonment of his estates. These lands, together with O’Donnell’s, were a matter of 800,000 acres. (The six escheated counties thus involved were: Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh).” Louie Cullen writes in The Irish Brandy Houses of 18th Century France, 2000, “Irishmen were prominent in the trade of Spain and France in the 18th century; Irish names still survive in streets, trading houses and châteaux… wine châteaux carry the names Lynch, Kirwan, MacCarthy and Boyd.”

The tune “What a Wonderful World” floats through the light air. A bowler hatted musician is in his element showing off his talent on the ivories in the adjoining Saloon. “Hallelujah” follows our favourite “Moon River” then comes the Downton Abbey theme. A “rococo harmony” straight from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz delights. “Music, plangent and unobtrusive…” To recycle Henry James’ character Densher’s phrase in The Wings of the Dove, how “delightfully rococo”. Each piece is imbued with novel meaning and nuanced memory. We’re up for him playing the Victorian hymn “I’ve Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop” although we’d like him to skip the line “I’m satisfied with just a cottage below”. Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, once shared she was fascinated by properties “from palaces to pigsties”. We’ll settle for the former. Min did tell us Irish country houses held a special place in her heart; she was a member of the Irish Georgian Society. Long after our stay at Ballyfin, like Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s character John, we “remembered that first night as a daze of many colours, of quick sensory impressions, of music soft as a voice in love, and of the beauty of things, lights and shadows, and motions and faces”.

Head Chef Sam Moody runs the kitchen at Ballyfin; he cuts the mustard and knows his scallions: “The best meals start with the best ingredients and breakfast is no different. For 150 years or more the apple trees in our orchard have provided their fruit for the house. Apples are collected and pressed each autumn for you to drink throughout the year as Ballyfin’s famous apple juice. Some chickens are lucky enough to call Ballyfin Demesne home; you can stroll up to the top walled garden and collect a few eggs for breakfast and we will happily cook them. Honey is produced by our busy bees in the quiet northwest corner of the estate. Bernd Schuh looks after our bees and extracts the honey for you to enjoy.”

A breakfast menu snippet reads, “The popularity of blue and white china across the globe in the 1700s could not be ignored. America and Europe were flooded with imports from China that were incredibly popular. It was in 1784 that Josiah Spode I perfected the process of under glaze printing on earthenware with tissue paper transfers made from land engraved golden plates. Initially the designs were sympathetic reproductions of the Chinese porcelain that had been incredibly popular during the 1700s but soon Josiah launched original designs such as Willow, circa 1790, and Blue Tower, 1814. Our breakfast china has been selected for Ballyfin as a china typical of the period when the Cootes first welcomed guests to the house.”

The back stairs that once threaded together the service and polite rooms of the house now provide access to the basement bar and swimming pool in the rejigged 20th century wing. “The Ballroom above the swimming pool was the old refectory of the college,” relates John. “It is wide and long with a low ceiling so to foreshorten the space I have advised painting murals in the ceiling roses.” As Oscar Wilde taught, “About the ceiling: the ceiling is a great problem always – what to do with that great expanse of white plaster.” A snippet in a glass cabinet along one of the later wing corridors informs us, “This is part of the large collection of silver assembled by the Coote family over two centuries. The earliest piece here is a London coffee pot dated 1704 with the crest of the Earl of Mountrath. The latest is a cigarette box of 1907. The silver along with all the contents of the house left Ballyfin when the family departed in 1923. Since then much of the silver has been dispersed. Happily contents of this cabinet returned to Ballyfin in April 2014 when it was disposed of by Sir Christopher Coote. The oak iron bound silver chest in which the silver was stored is now in the Library.”

Another corridor snippet reads, “This piece of Bog Oak was found buried in a peat bog in County Offaly. Preserved from decay by the acidic and anaerobic bog conditions, it could be around 5,000 to 8,000 years old.” These remnants of history along the corridors are counterbalanced by more than a generous helping of modern art cool. Vying for attention are Irish and international paintings: ‘The Divination of Ugber’ by John Boyd (born 1957); ‘Lewis Mumford Says’ by American artist Blaise Drummond (born 1967); ‘Abstract Composition’ by Mainie Jellet (1897 to 1944); ‘Patient’ by Brian Maguire (born 1951); ‘Burning Building’ by Stephen McKenna (born 1939); ‘Bellacorick’ by British artist Hughie O’Donoghue (born 1953); and ‘Untitled’ by Ross Wilson (born 1957). We raise our filled flutes to Oscar Wilde’s observation that there is “nothing in life that art cannot raise and sanctify”.

And now for a vignette of Ballyfin style service. Barely have we gingerly opened our bedroom jib door than the butler comes running. It’s 7am on a Sunday morning. “Coffee?” Now that’s called mindreading. Especially when it means a full pot with plain and lemon shortbread served next to the specially lit fire in the Saloon. What Princess Michael wants, Princess Michael gets. We’re reminded of the composer Samuel Barber’s 1952 experience of Glenveagh Castle in County Donegal: “Joy of joys, peat fires are burning in every room… they call it turf… and burning it has an ineffable perfume, at least for me.” Forget spoons and mouths, we were born with silver trays on our knees. It does result in us being more stuffed that the Entrance Hall taxidermy for our 8am full omelette (salmon and whatsoever things are lovely) breakfast served once again in the Dining Room.

“Even the bill is beautiful at Ballyfin!” smiles the receptionist waving us off and it really is gorgeously presented and amplified by an embarrassment of party favours for the road. Let’s hope our bank manager concurs. The only peccadillo is this: every hotel from henceforth will be an anti-climax. For haven’s sake there absolutely are no equals. There were no prequels; there will never be any sequels. Right down to the three enigmatic cherry tomatoes. Ballyfin isn’t cheap but shrouds have no pockets. The 2020s are the new 1820s and Ballyfin is the only place to sizzle this season. It’s not just the fires that are roaring in these hallowed rooms.

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Art Design Luxury People

Dame Rosalind Savill + Madame de Pompadour + Sèvres Porcelain + 500 Years of European Ceramics Bonhams London

Reinette  

“Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, 1721 to 1764, became official mistress to Louis XV in 1745. Their patronage of the Vincennes  Sèvres porcelain manufactory, both jointly and individually, ensured its success. Its production is characterised by brilliant colours, daring design and an insatiable pursuit of novelty,” explains Nette Megens, Head of Department of European Ceramics at Bonhams. “Her purchases, which she made regularly, from 1747 until her death, and the factory’s products are the subject of a definitive new book by Dame Rosalind Savill: Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain.”

The Bond Street auction house gallery is aglow as Pol Roger Champagne and mince pies are served at an exhibition 500 Years of European Ceramics covering Italian, Meissen, Vienna and Sèvres porcelain to celebrate the book launch on the tercentenary of Madame de Pompadour’s birth. “This exhibition and book launch is organised by Bonhams and The French Porcelain Society,” introduces Nette. “If you’re not a member of the Society, shame on you! Ros wrote a seminal book 41 years ago on The Wallace Collection Sèvres and to her credit it has remained up there with the best of books on the subject. It’s sold out. This new book is of the same canon … ‘Ros’, as she is known to all, is exceptional, generous, charming, persevering and kind.” Addressing the author directly, “You are a demigod of competence darling angel, simply the best; we are all the keenest members of your fan club tonight!”

John Whitehead, authority on 18th century decorative arts and Committee Member of The French Porcelain Society, remarks, “Ros is the greatest scholar blessed with an extraordinary talent for communicating. Her events at the Society are always a sell out and her enthusiasm is infectious.” Back to Nette: “The tone of this book is all about hearing her talk. It feels so personal and lovely … Now it’s time for the Dame!” Dazzling in a Sèvres pink coloured dress, Dame Rosalind Savill discusses her book. She was of course Director of the Wallace Collection London, 1992 to 2011, and is a specialist in French decorative arts, especially Sèvres.

“We are here to celebrate the 300th birthday of Madame de Pompadour. She kept youth on her side, right to her death,” notes Rosalind. Nancy Mitford rhapsodises in her 1968 biography, “Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of humans being thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral is the art of living.” Rosalind again, “This book covers her daily routine and what she bought each year in court. The pieces vary from simplicity to embracing the wildest extravagance – a gamut of some of the best ever produced. You can’t help but be drawn into these beautiful but useful pieces. It is their quality, their specialness, that makes them exquisite. The colours are so unbelievable and unlike textiles they haven’t faded. This is the 18th century staring you in the face!” She points out the beauty of one piece decorated with peacock feathers resembling the Christmas street decorations outside on New Bond Street. And the functionality of another: a cup with a deep wide saucer for drinking hot milk in bed. “Madame de Pompadour was worn to a frazzle trying to keep the whole show on the road. Louis XV couldn’t bear not to have her by his side.”

Pierre Arrizoli-Clémentel, Directeur Générale du Châteaux de Versailles, summarises in his Forward to the book, “In these beautiful volumes Rosalind Savill has had the inspired idea of recording the annual calendar of Sèvres manufacture for the marquise’s incessant orders which reveals her true love of French porcelain.” Rosalind entices the reader with her opening line, “Imagine being 23 years old and suddenly isolated in the competitive, combative world of the royal palace of Versailles.” Such an imagination is brought vividly to life in two volumes totalling 1,232 pages weighing 7.5 kilograms. She elaborates, “It is possible to trace her annual purchases from the factory, month by month, revealing how these were often intimately connected to events in her life.” Intriguing chapter subtitles range from Dairies and Milk Mania and Washing, Hygiene and Health to Pets: Dogs, Birds and Other Animals and Letter Writing: Embroidery and Knotting.

The work is polished and academic yet entertaining and full of fascinating anecdotes from “Madame de Pompadour helped make bathing popular” to “She remarked on the King’s tenderness towards his children, though she was critical of their looks”. Rosalind writes movingly of the impact of her female subject’s death: “Louis XV outlived Madame de Pompadour by 10 years, but nothing could replace his 19 year relationship with her. Voltaire wrote of how surprising it was that ‘a beautiful woman should die … in the midst of the most dazzling career in the world.” In the words of Nancy Mitford, “After this a great sadness fell upon the Château of Versailles.” The last paragraph of ‘Everyday Rococo’ sets the scene for the title of these volumes, “She was perfectly in tune with the rococo period in which she lived, and enabled it to evolve and flourish. But mostly she was buying exceptional objects to enhance her everyday life.” Dame Rosalind Savill dedicates her brilliant publication to “my darling daughter Isabella Dove Savill“.

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Architecture Art Design Luxury

Galeries Lafayette Haussmann + Champs Élysées Paris

The City of Light in the Season of Light 

At Christmastime it’s more like the City of Lights. Nowhere does festive decorations better than Paris and nowhere does Parisian festive decorations better than Galeries Lafayette Haussmann opposite the Palais Garnier. For the last 45 years, the store has suspended a Christmas tree from its vast stained glass Art Déco dome over the central galleried atrium. This year the pneumatic sundae cottage and lobster clad tree is accompanied by a space helmeted Santa Claus. Luxury fashion and interiors brands in the legendary store – 3,500 in total – include Alexander Turpault, Annick Goutal and Tara Jarmon. “One, Two, Three, Noël,” reads one sign. “Nous vous souhaitons de joyeuses fêtes,” another. Further to the west of Paris, in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe on Champs Élysées, Dior wins best temporary façade for its monochromatic monoflex.

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Art Design Fashion Luxury Restaurants

The Ivy Chelsea Garden + The Ivy Asia Chelsea London

Tis the Season

They’re the Siamese twins of London’s restaurant scene. The Ivy Chelsea Garden is joined at the hip, or at least a party wall, to The Ivy Asia Chelsea. If you’re after understatement and don’t appreciate a heavy dose of bling, The Ivy Chelsea Garden’s more exotic neighbour isn’t the place for you. Everything is back lit from the green onyx floor to the Sumo wrestler guarding the staircase. A Samurai warrior makes for an unlikely companion in the bathroom. Green velvet jacketed staff glide around the red velvet cushioned chairs. Sexy Fish style popping candy profiteroles are the future, or at least they are in this piece of the East meets West London. Lunchtime dance music with the hottest babes in town: what’s not to love? It’s a familial formula that clearly works: The Ivy Brighton is gaining a co-joined Asian twin; so is The Ivy Castle View Guildford.

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Art Design Fashion People

British Museum + Wallace Chan

The First Asian Artist to Show at the Paris Biennale

“All butterflies were once caterpillars. I became known as ‘The Butterfly Man’ after my first shows in 2007 in Basil and Moscow. The butterfly has always meant a lot to me. As a child when I saw my first butterfly I asked, ‘What are these flying colours?’ In my eyes butterflies are always flying colours. A dream is never entirely fictional; there are always elements of reality. My pieces incorporate real butterfly wings. I bring them back to life. The average lifespan of a butterfly is only two to four weeks. A lifespan of 83 days was recorded for a Chestnut Tiger butterfly. It flew from Japan to Hong Kong. It travelled for most of its life to the unknown.”

“Titanium reflects the technology of our times. It is not easy to tame; it’s a very stubborn metal. It took me eight years to master it. Titanium is magical; you must not force things to happen to it. You must let it guide you through the process. An unsung hero, titanium is multifaceted. My pieces are full of emotions to provide the possibilities of transcendence. The pursuit of beauty is endless. Think about classical music: it is abstract, formless, yet it surrounds us and connects to our emotions. My art is about beauty, love, courage, colour, transformation. It is beautiful being human – and vulnerable too. Live in the garden of joy. Embrace every fleeting moment. Take a different path home; you will find an unsung beauty. I have dreams of dancing in love and light.”

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Architecture Art Design Town Houses

Deal Town Kent + The Green + Found

All Blacks

Seasons come and seasons go. The Black Douglas has gone; The Black Pig’s still here. It’s the place of quirky decorations (horizontal Christmas trees) and quirkier houses (a late 17th century chapel masquerading as a 19th century gothic cottage orné on High Street) and even quirkier house names (Comarques, home of composer John Ireland from 1936 to 1939, and Winkle Cottage) and super quirky architectural details (shell decorated fanlights and doorstep windows). But there’s only one place to be on a wintry Friday night in East Kent’s most fashionable resort: the private view of The Green and Found, England’s only gift shop abutting a Grade I brick garden wall built by Henry VIII.

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Architecture Art Design People Town Houses

Tower of London + Crown Jewels

An Address to Die For

It’s a vibrant microcosm of an historic walled city. Killer Queen Anne townhouses among thriller Tudor jetties and gables with all the cosiness of a cathedral precinct. It’s more like the Town of London than Tower of London. We’re here for an exclusive afterhours private view of the Crown Jewels or as our beefeater guide calls them “the most valuable objects on the planet”. Our favourite pieces are Queen Victoria’s Diamond Crown and the Grand Punch Bowl.

The crown was designed to be worn by Queen Victoria on top of her widow’s cap. So tiny, it’s more of a crownlet. It incorporates 1,187 brilliant-cut and rose-cut diamonds in an openwork silver frame. Queen Victoria first wore this crown for the opening of Parliament in 1871. The punchbowl is full throttle George IV bling. A silver gilt wine cistern, it can hold the equivalent of 144 bottles of wine. One way to get the party going! In between rods and coronets, there are more orbs than an episode of Most Haunted.

The social merry-go-round never stops. The after party is at The Reveller on the edge of the Thames (where guests more than live up to its name). The after after party is at Dirty Martini in the City. And the after after after party is at Annabel P’s, the new Annabel’s. Like Barack Obama, we’re always trying to push a little more optimism.

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Art Design Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Standard Hotel King’s Cross London + Ibiza + Hua Hin

Autumn Leaves Fall

It’s 5pm on a Wednesday evening and the Veuve Cliquot is flowing along with canapés that set a whole new standard for finger food. And that’s even before the rum punch and margarita cocktails reception gets going. We’re in Townhouse Eight event space which has a wraparound terrace illuminated by the full moon of St Pancras’ clock and the fireworks display of King’s Cross’ cranes.

Our host is Elli Jafari, Managing Director of The Standard, London. That’s her métier (profession) and that’s her métier (talent). The glamorous Iranian-American tells us, “Our London hotel has many layers, some naughty, some sweet!” The phallic sculpture rescued from an Italian vintage fair welcoming guests to the top floor private dining room certainly falls into the former category. There’s lashings of the latter too.

“We’re pleased to announce two new hotels: The Standard, Ibiza and The Standard, Hua Hin. Our Ibiza hotel will have a sexy bar with amazing music. The 67 bedroom hotel is in the famous and historic Old Town and you’ll be able to hire one or more of our many private villas too. It’s very rare to be able to rent a private villa in the Old Town. Our resort is next to the marina so all the super yachts will be there for your arrival!”

“The Standard, Hua Hin resort with its accompanying private beach villas is Thailand’s answer to the Maldives. The resort will include a 171 bedroom hotel along with 28 villas creating a poolside vibe reminiscent of The Standard, Miami. We have more signed deals in Europe: Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon and Milan. Each destination is eclectic and individual – each of our hotels is completely unique. Our Dublin hotel, due to open in 2025, like all our hotels will have various restaurants. Something for everyone! We want to embrace Dublin culture and all the energy the vibrant city offers.” It’s not so much about creating a new standard of living as a new standard of staying. And eating. And partying. And being.

Karla Evans, Director of Marketing and Culture at The Standard London, takes us on a whistlestop tour of the hotel. It’s now 7pm and party central. It feels like every space is throbbing to a wild music beat – parts of it are in fact. Podcasts and music are streamed from the Sounds Studio and the Isla restaurant hosts DJs every weekend. It’s hard to believe that the core building used to be Camden Council’s offices.

Our guide relates, “The ground floor reading room is a homage to the Council library which used to be here. It’s stocked with vintage sourced books from the Fifties to the Eighties. It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek!” ‘Chaos’ and ‘Order’ bookcases are cheek-by-jowl; so are ‘Politics’ and ‘Tragedy’. “We have drag races in the bar on Sundays. There’s always a unique shop in Standard Hotels where you can purchase weird and wonderful goods sourced from all over the world.” Snatch Game Brooches by Lou Taylor and Trip Wild Mint and Camomile Oil are two quirky gifts on display in the London shop.

We’re on the 10th floor now. “Decimo is our Michelin starred Hispanic Mexican restaurant. Alexander McQueen held their afterparty here. The theatre of the kitchen is on full display. There’s definitely a bit of an LA party feel to this hotel.” That’s true for sure: there’s nothing standard about our evening. “You must finish the night in Double Standard, our New York style bar for highflyers. It’s famous for Aperol spritz slushes!”

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Architects Architecture Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Hoxton Hotel + Seabird Restaurant Southwark London

Midtown Mid Rise Midday

It’s the hottest table in town right now. And certainly the most dizzying. The acute angled windowed corner of Seabird for a cute pair only. We’re enjoying another Bowenesque moment. Elizabeth liked to party. Her house Bowens Court in County Cork was made for parties although it was demolished before she had to start charging guests. The Anglo Irish novelist would approve of our choice of Toucan Do It cocktails (Olmeca Los Altos, cinnamon, aji pepper) at noon. Rewarding.

Seabird is the penthouse level restaurant of The Hoxton Hotel isn’t in Hoxton, east London; it’s in Southwark, south London. The hotel is located in a bit of a no woman’s land but none the worse for it. There’s still an element of grittiness and character marking this stretch of Blackfriars Road. The Prince William Henry pub opposite advertises “two darts boards” and a “backyard private room”. Interesting. Blackfriars Food Market offers “Korean, Kofte Hut, Semoorg, Japanese, Thai, Falafel”. We’ll soon discover that when it comes to Seabird, safari hued staff uniforms and rattan furniture lend a Mediterranean mood matched by the seafood focused menu with such highlights as ginger infused prawn croquetas carabinero in olive oil. Appetising.

A lift zaps us up from ground zero to level 14. Not quite skyscraping then but it turns out this height is perfect for taking in a horizontal pendulum view from upstream Thames to downtown Southwark. Bang in the middle of the view to the north stands One Blackfriars designed by Simpson Haugh, a bulging glass erection full of bankers who have trousered a few bonuses in their time. Revealing. To the southeast can be seen architect genius Trevor Morriss’ Music Box apartments and college. Rogers Stirk Harbour’s Neo Bankside wrapping around the 1740s Hopton’s Almshouses are to the east. Satisfying

The Hoxton’s architects are Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, a London practice going very strong since 1986. Derwent London, the developers, are the Capital’s leading deliverer of non residential floorspace. Alex Lifschutz considers, “The Hoxton Southwark is an example of the hospitality sector leading trends in co working and co living by treating premises and buildings as active and integrated rather than passive resources.” Fascinating.

He continues, “This multilayered building picks up from one of our earliest and best known projects, Oxo Tower just round the corner on the Thames. Oxo also provides a very varied and integrated mix of uses including affordable cooperative apartments, independent shops, designer maker studios, a gallery plus the emblematic Harvey Nichols Oxo Tower brasserie and restaurant at roof level, still going strong after 25 years of operation.” Illuminating.

Where Southwark lacks a tight urban grid – this isn’t New York – it does now have at least one tight architectural grid. The Hoxton exhibits strong elevations with a downtown warehouse appeal enhanced by buff and dark brown facing brick. The street experience is more permeable with larger windows lighting ground and mezzanine floor restaurants, bars and conference rooms. Distracting.

There’s an emphasis on long term adaptability of the architecture: Alex Lifschutz once more, “The present hotel rooms could be converted into offices or vice versa and all the floorplates could be reconfigured as apartments. Likewise, the rooftop restaurant could be altered to become penthouse flats…” No woman is an island. When a woman is tired of (high) London living, at street level there’s always a game of darts to play or a bag of falafel to grab. Tempting.

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Architecture Design Hotels Restaurants Town Houses

The Whistledown Hotel + Bandstand Warrenpoint Down

Pink Flamingos

A late 19th century terrace of houses, long a hotel, has been reinvigorated and given a not so much High Victorian interior as High Celtic. Exuberance is the word. Lunch in the canted bay window is framed on three sides by the best view in County Down, overlooking the incoming storm brewing on Carlingford Lough. Yacht sails shudder, rocks are sprayed and seagulls flap around, while wild garlic mushrooms are served in the first floor restaurant of The Whistledown Hotel come hail or high water. To the rear of the hotel is Warrenpoint Park complete with its freshly restored bandstand, good for sheltering from the rain.

Warrenpoint is blessed with an abundance of Victorian houses, especially along the esplanade. Castle House, close to an inland side of Warrenpoint Park, stands out as being older. It’s a Georgian five bedroomed three storeys over exposed basement corner house marking the junction of St Peter’s Street and Great George’s Street South. The first floor paired Gothic windows are particularly distinctive: with fenestration like this curtains would be a crime. The ground floor margin paned sitting room windows, the middle portion taller than its outer equivalents, is equally interesting, reflecting a triptych of the streetscape. Even a spider’s web of telephone wires can’t diminish the charming appearance of Castle House.

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Architects Architecture Design

Our Lady Star of the Sea Church Desertegney + Liam McCormick

Rend Collective Hit

It’s not the most likely place to come across a 1960s architectural masterpiece. But then rugged County Donegal, ever by the sea, is full of surprises. A few kilometres north of the lively town of Buncrana, on a wild and windy and windswept road, a Celtic corniche eventually leading to Dunree Head, stands Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in the otherwise little known townland of Desertegney. Indeed, on an especially inclement day the white architecture merges with the swirling white clouds and almost disappears.

This is the third in a series of seven churches architect Liam McCormick (1916 to 1996) bestowed on this most northwest of Irish counties. Donaghmore (gable ended, almost domestic scaled, spirelet rising from roof ridge) is his only Presbyterian church; the rest are Catholic. Church of St Aengus Burt (circular plan, swooping asymmetric roof, stone walls) is his most celebrated, the recipient of endless awards. St Michael’s Church Creeslough (sculptural mound, irregular groupings of oblong windows) is clearly inspired by Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut. St Conal’s Church Glenties (triangular buttresses, huge monopitched roofs) is sharp angled. St Peter’s Church Milford (obtuse angled front, standalone bell tower) is his least radical design. St Patrick’s Church Murlog (large cruciform plan, splayed walls).

Our Lady of the Sea is by name and nature nautical. The long low main building with its western bell end shape and high porthole like windows is reminiscent of a boat come ashore. This was the architect’s direct response to the site which overlooks Lough Swilly on a clear day. The modernist minimalist bell tower linked to the church by a glazed vestibule is a daring concept of geometry, a clever combination of solid and void, a religious lighthouse. Liam McCormick was a great yachtsman.

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, County Donegal, 2014, states, “Church architecture did not evolve again until well after World War II, when a response was required to reflect the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965) with its renewed emphasis on the collective experience of the faithful. Nowhere in Ireland was this achieved more successfully than in Donegal by Liam McCormick whose church designs broke completely with earlier conservative models. While his buildings make reference to the past in their use of familiar vernacular forms and textures, they also respond to place and the Donegal landscape. In several cases the sites were selected by the architect and the manipulation of both the building and it is a precious part of their impact that is sometimes overlooked.”

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Hôtel George Washington + Le Petit George Restaurant Paris

French Connections

The Francophile Charles Dickens would still recognise the Golden Triangle of Paris. Dickens on France edited by John Edmondson in 2007, “Dickens first saw Paris in July 1844, when he and his family were travelling through France on their way to Italy. He was instantly enthralled: ‘I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world. I was not prepare for, and really could not have believed in, its perfectly distinct and separate character.’ This first, fleeting visit marked the beginning of a friendship with the city that would last for the rest of his life.”

To quote Joseph Roth in The White Cities: Reports from France 1925 to 1939, “Over the rooftops of Paris there is a smiling baby colossus of rude health.” A baguette’s throw from Champs-Élysées and a croissant’s toss from l’Arc de Triomphe lies Hôtel George Washington, one of two independent boutique Parisian hotels (the other is Hôtel Chateaubriand) owned by second generation hoteliers and siblings Romain Rio and Méryll Collette. Assistant General Manager, Camay Tan, explains, “The Rio family are personally involved in both the decoration and day to day operations. It’s a unique ‘guest home’. All 20 guest rooms are individually decorated: every single detail was created and specially made. Hôtel George Washington is both classical French and contemporary.”

A love of interior design is clear from the custard colour and navy trimmed reception hall to the 27 meter high seascape mural painted on gold leaf seen from the elevator behind a glass panel to the Marmara marbled bathroom filled with The Ritual of Ayurveda products. “There’s a focus on really good materials,” says Camay. There’s also a focus on individuality: domed objets d’art; Grecian urns; sculpted shirt collars; Indian feathers. In the duck egg blue reception rear reception area opening onto an intimate courtyard are bookshelves with hours of distraction. Titles include ‘American Fashion’, ‘La Lumière de Londres, ‘Putman Style’, ‘Le Style Hitchcock’. Joseph Roth springs to mind again: “… it’s so well appointed that it almost corresponds to my notion of a seventh heaven.”

In Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s short story The Camel’s Back character Perry exclaims, “Take me upstairs. If that cork sees my heart it’ll fall out from pure mortification.” Channelling your inner Perry, close your eyes and dream of the ideal Parisian hotel bedroom. And open your eyes in the fourth floor bedroom of Hôtel George Washington. As you gaze through the pair of French doors clasping Juliet balconies and a trombonist serenades you from the street below (no, not artistic licence, this is Paris), it’s clear some dreams come true. There’s an elephant in the room. Or at least one over the bed. And a herd in the Ralph Lauren wallpaper. “It’s so unique, that’s one of my favourite bedrooms,” Camay confides. “Our bedrooms are very large for Paris. They all have double beds with a bath and rain shower in the en suite bathrooms.”

“We are in the business area of the Golden Triangle of Paris,” she confirms, that iconic 8th Arrondisement. “Do you know how the Arrondisements are numbered? They are ordered like an escargot, the numbers swirling around in decreasing concentric circles. We kept the façade of Hôtel George Washington and refurbished everything else behind. At Hôtel Chateaubriand we were able to keep the original form inside. Hôtel George Washington is a Haussmann townhouse with a ‘noble’ second floor which has a balcony. Our service is very personal – our team have been with us a long time. Our clients are a very good mix of leisure and business travellers.”

The Rios also own Le Petit George a few doors up on Rue Washington. Quirky neon lettering on the awning reads “Sincère et Malicieux”. Has Tracey Emin been en ville? We have an aperitif: “Champagne is an integral part of French culture!” Camay relates, “Monsieur Rio’s inspiration for this restaurant was the same expression of luxury as the hotels, from opulent linen tablecloths to silver cutlery, bringing back attention to detail. We wanted to change part of French dining culture and bridge the gap between bistro and gastronomy: ‘bistronomy’. It’s a unique dining experience.” The all-female run establishment is a hit with lawyers and bankers midweek and well informed travellers at the weekend. “We attract a really good lunch crowd and are busy Monday to Friday. Lisa l’des Forges is Chef and Melisande Malle is Sommelier and Manager.

The décor is an essay in understated elegance in a language only the French can compose. A marble and brass bar stretches along one party wall and the kitchen to the rear is only visible through a small serving hatch. There are no pictures on the walls: we are the living art in this space. “There’s a Chef’s Table in the basement for 10 people,” leads Camay. Joseph Roth once more, “Paradise is downstairs, in a basement. But it’s so well appointed that it almost corresponds to my notion of a seventh heaven.”

There’s plenty for seafood lovers on this evening’s menu. Anchovies for hors d’oeuvre (Anchois de Cantabria); caviar for entrée (St Jacques de Bretagne à cru, purée de choux fleurs, caviar de hareng fumé); and octopus for plat (Poulpe grille, joue de porcelet, haricots); accompanied by an aromatic Domaine de l’Enclos 2018 Chablis by Romain et Damien Bouchard. “We have a passion for natural wine produced without sulphite,” Melisande shares. “We’ve all the classics and also like to educate with new wines. It’s a very elaborate wine list!” No food fatigue here: “Lisa changes the menu three times a week,” confirms Camay. “They are dancing in the streets of Paris,” reported Joseph Roth. That’ll be us; we’re in rude health.

Charles Dickens witnessed at first hand the dramatic transformation of Paris. Dickens on France edited by John Edmondson 2007, “It was transformed, under the aegis of Napoléon III, by Georges Haussmann, Préfet de la Seine from 1853 to 1870. Haussmann had many of the old streets in central Paris demolished to make way for a system of long elegant boulevards that brought structural unity to the city… Dickens witnessed the progress of this Haussmannisation at first hand. He told W H Wills in a letter of October 1862 that a group of theatres on the Boulevard du Temple ‘that used to be so characteristic’ had been demolished ‘and preparations for some amazing new streets are in rapid progress.’”

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Parc Morceau Paris +

Oh Em Gigi

“You have to live near the Parc Monceau,” opined Nancy Mitford. “Well, they live up by the Parc Monceau. We must all meet up one day soon.” David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, established his Paris headquarters at Hôtel Le Royal Monceau last century. Parisienne Maud Rabin remarks, “It’s so beautiful; lots of movies have been made here.” The park is surrounded by gorgeous townhouses and apartment blocks with penthouses and attics catching glimpses over the high treeline of the flights of fancy immortalised by Claude Monet.

The public park was established by Phillippe d’Orléans Duc de Chartres, a cousin of King Louis XVI, following the Duc’s marriage to the Princesse de Penthièvre. He commissioned the writer and painter Louis Carrogis (better known as Carmontelle) to design the gardens – they still retain a painterly quality. Carmontelle subcontracted the Duc’s architect Bernard Poyet and a German landscape architect Etickhausen to design a series of follies in an informal layout. An Egyptian pyramid on a lawn and a Roman colonnade reflected in a pond of waterlilies and an English bridge over a stream continue to delight visitors.

It’s not Paris if there’s no hint of Haussmannia. Monsieur Georges Eugène of course managed a spot of 19th remodelling of the park under Napoléon III. Set in an exclusive quartier of the 8th Arrondisement, wealthy Jewish banking families such as the Camondos, Rothschilds and Péreires established residences skirting the perimeter of the park. You really do have to live near the Parc Monceau.

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Le Petit Palais Paris + Jean-Michel Othoniel + The Narcissus Theorem

We Love What We See in Our Reflection

Juliette Singer, Chief Curator of Le Petit Palais, explains, “Every autumn since 2013, Le Petit Palais opens its doors to contemporary art. This year, our guest of honour is Jean-Michel Othoniel, born in Saint- Étienne in 1964, an international renowned artist famous in Paris for his 2000 installation Kiosque des Noctambules at the entrance of the Palais Royal metro station. Since his retrospective My Way at Le Centre Pompidou 10 years ago, the theme of re-enchantment has been at the heart of this artist’s work.”

She’s more to say, “With more than 70 new sculptures in mirrored beads and glass bricks, The Narcissus Theorem focuses on Le Petit Palais and its architecture. Taking up the myth of Narcissus – a man who, in love with his own image, was transformed into a flower – Othoniel engages with visitors, inviting them to self contemplation but also offering a reflection of the world around them through his work.”

Juliette’s even more to say, “This journey through myths and fairy tales begins with a rite of passage: the crossing of a river. Visitors then proceed to the garden of forbidden fruits before descending into the Grotto of Narcissus. Exploring the theory of reflections of the Mexican mathematician Aubin Arroyo, Othoniel transports us to a world between dreams and reality, opening up doors to endless fields of space and imagination.”

Le Petit Palais isn’t petite but it is palatial. Architect Charles Girault won a competition to build the museum for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He liked to make an entrance: the gilded to the nines front doors are framed by one pair of pilasters and three pairs of ionic columns supporting ever increasingly larger arches. Charlie gives a masterclass in très Beaux Arts.

Such commanding architecture demands arresting art and Jean-Michel Othoniel doesn’t disappoint: he wins hearts and delivers in spades. He too can make an entrance: his piece Blue River was created in situ with bricks of Indian glass flowing over the stone steps. The artist is asking us to pass from one world to another, a playful, magical and poetic universe. In the courtyard fountains, Narcissus is four gilded lotus flowers reflecting the water that reflects them. It is the yellow of the flower in the legend. Hanging from trees or rising from the ground, Necklaces evoke the temptations of hidden forbidden fruit.

As another mathematician, Hannah Fry, told us at the recent Westminster Property Association dinner at The Londoner Hotel, “Equations and symbols aren’t just a thing, they’re a voice that speaks out about the incredible richness of nature and the startling simplicity in the patterns that twist and turn and warp and evolve around us.” One of the most fun aspects of the show is just spottting the pieces. Are the gilt swags in the colonnade art or architecture? We are not wallflowers; we are made in God’s image.

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Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris + Thierry Mugler

It’s Chemical

Writer Gertrude Stein quipped in the 1920s, “And so life in Paris began and as all roads lead to Paris, all of us are now there.” We’re at the opening of the Thierry Mugler show Couturissime at Musée des Arts Décoratifs (known by all by its acronym MAD). Everyone is here. Dynamic and dramatically lit displays are arranged in acts like an opera, ensembles ranging from sci-fi robotic garbs and aquatic fantasy fauna to even wilder flights of the designer’s imagination. Thierry Mugler’s work, whether overture or finale, is always original, often avant garde, sometimes subversive, never dull. Gertrude Stein also mentioned, “In Paris you have to have a formula.” In the 2020s we have: we’ve got chemistry.

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Nancy Mitford + 7 Rue Monsieur Paris

Love in a Temperate Climate

She adored Derek Hill (the painter) and couldn’t stand Le Corbusier (the architect). She wrote the biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and Louis XIV. She was the cousin of Clementine Lady Beit, last doyenne of Ireland’s great house Russborough. Her nephew Desmond Guinness co founded the Irish Georgian Society. She had a pet chicken and cat. She wrote bestselling novels Highland Fling, Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love among others. And she loved Paris. Enter Nancy Mitford, our favourite female English novelist.

She lived in the 7th Arrondisement on the Left Bank. “A very charming flat between the courtyard and the garden,” was how she described her French home. “The days go by and I have no desire to move from my house and garden.” Her sister Diana Mosley said, “As soon as possible, in 1945, she got a flat in Paris, where she lived for 20 happy years.” She never lived in England again. Nancy wrote to her mother, “I am so completely happy here… I feel a totally different person as if I had come out of a coalmine into daylight… Oh my passion for the French!”

It was a charmed existence. “The houses she visited ‘glittered like miniature Wallace Collections’ and the women were generally ‘glittering with jewels’,” records Harold Action in his 1975 biography of Nancy Mitford. He offers tantalising glimpses into her Parisian life: “Highly diverted by the difference of French and English social conventions, full of admiration for General de Gaulle, enchanted by the details and incidental episodes of the Parisian scene, she became ardently Francophile, yet she remained English to the core.”

“For the next 20 years, the happiest of her life, Nancy settled in Paris. Even before settling there she had put these words into the mouth of her hero Fabrice: ‘One’s emotions are intensified in Paris – one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town. The rest of the world seems unbearably cold and bleak to us, hardly worth living in…”

“Always a strenuous walker, Nancy was able to familiarise herself with the intimate old Paris behind the boulevards and the Hôtel de Ville, the quays and narrower streets with high roofed buildings, with the venerable Place des Vosges and the classical mansions on the left bank of the Seine so long inhabited by French nobility whose names had inspired Balzac and Proust. Balzac’s Madame de Sauve might even have suggested Nancy’s Sauveterre. The British Embassy was full of her friends. Our Ambassador Duff Cooper and the glamorous Lady Diana made it sparkle as never before with poets, painters and musicians.”

“Before the end of 1947 she had the good fortune to discover an ideal apartment, the ground floor of an old mansion between courtyard and garden in the Rue Monsieur, which she referred to henceforth as ‘Mr Street’. ‘I’ve got a perfectly blissful and more or less permanent flat,’ she informed in December 1947, ‘Untouched I should think for 60 years. I spent my first evening removing the 25 lace mats with objects on them mostly from Far Japan (dainty). The furniture is qualité de musée – such wonderful pieces, now you can see them.” Her character Cedric sounds positively autobiographic in Love in a Cold Climate: “In Paris I have an apartment of all beauty. One’s idea of heaven.”

Little wonder Nancy was a Francophile and honorary Parisian. Aren’t we all? Rue Monsieur is the Lad Lane of Paris. A tranquil oasis surrounded by all the action. Where Rue Monsieur tips the louche sounding Rue de Babylone to the north of Nancy’s pied-à-terre is the intriguing looking La Pagode. Under wraps for now, this oriental building was built as a community hall in 1896 to the design of architect Alexander Marcel before improbably becoming a cinema in the 1930s. Presumably our favourite female English novelist caught the odd matinée at La Pagode.

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Hôtel Meurice Paris + Lavender’s Blue

We Love Paris in the Springtime We Love Paris in the Fall

We’re back where we belong. “The energy of Paris will make you feel very good!” exclaims Parisienne Maud Rabin. The French capital sizzles once again. And nowhere more so than Le Meurice. The most beautifully curated of days. Bonne journée. Très bonne journée. We’ve got agency.

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Mary Martin London + The Broadway Theatre Catford + The Tabernacle Notting Hill + Mark Elie + Portobello Dance School London + Classically British + Africa Fashion Week London 2021 + Black History

The City Doesn’t Sleep Tonight

Tales of the new Jazz Age: It’s not every fashion shoot where the British Prime Minister is working in the adjoining meeting room. But then as we all well know by now Mary Martin London isn’t just any fashion designer or artist or fashion artist. The Return Collection preview at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was exactly one year ago. Fast forward 12 months and Mary’s just finished a stint as Bollywood’s inhouse designer. She’s back in (London) town now.

Forget Bond Street window displays. There’s real glamour on Catford Road. To celebrate the start of Black History Month, six of Mary’s dresses are displayed in the pavement level windows of The Broadway Theatre in Catford. “My dresses are theatrical so they are at home there!” she smiles. “There’s so much history to the theatre: jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie and Chick Corea and Motown singers like Gladys Knight all performed there.” The Broadway Theatre was designed in 1926 by Bradshaw Gass + Hope (a practice from Bolton responsible for many municipal buildings) and is a striking blend of Art Deco and Gothic Revival to reflect the architecture of the once adjoining Gothic Town Hall.

A few minutes away an afternoon launch is underway at Place, Britain’s first pop up village which opened in 2016. The great and the good from Lewisham Council are gathering to officially launch Black History Month and celebrate Mary Martin London fashion art. The theme is “B:L 365. More than just a month.” Councillor Andre Bourne, Cabinet Member for Culture is a fan: “I love Mary’s work. She is the ultimate creative!” So is the Mayor of Lewisham, Damien Egan: “We have discovered the new Alexander McQueen!” Like her predecessor, Mary is “the genius of a generation”.

Next stop The Tabernacle Notting Hill. This red brick and terracotta church, designed in 1883 by Habershon + Fawkner (a practice specialising in ecclesiastical buildings and responsible for many chapels in Newport), became a community arts centre in the 1970s. A plaque in the hallway commemorates the life of Claudia Jones (1915 to 1964) publisher, political activist and mother of the Notting Hill Carnival. She organised the first Caribbean Carnival in Britain in 1958. A ‘Carnival Line’ sign over a pair of London Underground Tube seats contains the following station stops: Sound Systems, Community, Friends, Dance, Inclusivity, Happiness, Joy, Unity, Steel Pan, Calypso, Live Stages.

Tonight is a Black History event: Classically British. It combines dance and fashion art. What’s not to love? The star talents are Mark Elie, Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of the Mark Elie Dance Foundation and Portobello Dance School, and… Mary Martin London! The lady and her entourage really are back in town. Mark’s dressed by his friend the designer Suzanka Fraey. “Mark’s costume,” explains Suzy, “is somewhere between Georgian and Dickensian.” She reminisces, “I grew up in Portobello. I remember Christine Keeler and Lucky Gordon hanging out round here.”

Dancers Arkasee Aslan, Anna-Maria de Freitas, Nathan Geering, Jasiah Marshal, Laila Wright and Stanley Young élancer, étendre, glisser, plier, relever, sauter and tourner in impossibly serene pirouettes and arabesques to an enraptured audience including Gerard Hargraves Mayor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Sitting in the front row next to him is Rianna Scipio. She was Britain’s first black weather presenter and hosts prominent television programmes such as Watchdog and Newsroom Southeast. She states, “I am a multi-passionate entrepreneur, international keynote speaker and radical self love ambassador.”

Rianna elaborates, “Mary and I started up business in fashion together many decades ago as teens and I transitioned into television – I’m still a dedicated lover of style. Mary followed her passion undaunted and is now reaping the rewards of her labour. I’m so proud of her! The ballet performance, a collaboration between Mary and the Mark Elie Dance Foundation, is simply breathtaking. I am transfixed.” Distinguished broadcaster Jasmine Dotiwala agrees: “It really is a spellbinding performance.”

From The Tabernacle Notting Hill to Freemasons’ Hall Covent Garden. Now there’s a leap of imagination and thought. Upstairs, it’s all the usual mayhem and madness backstage at Africa Fashion Week London 2021. Makeup! Hair! Change! Makeup! Hair! Change! Downstairs, a lively bazaar of African and African diaspora fashion includes Biblical inspired tops by Ileri. Owner Abiola Egbeye believes, “My fashion is my ministry. It’s important to love God.”

Mary is headlining this year’s Africa Fashion Week London. The Return Collection takes the catwalk by storm. Model Yasmin Jamaal shimmers in her final ensemble. The Gold Coast Dress. This couture art is a metaphor for our times: all that glitters isn’t gold; it’s woven plastic brocade. Ghana was once known as the Gold Coast. “I love Ghana,” says Mary, “and I’ve had many shows there. This winter I am going to Ghana to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award.” Yasmin notes, “The dress looks even better in real life than pictures. I love the drama. That’s so Mary! It’s the perfect dress. It is pure creativity. Onlooking model Hassan Reese exclaims, “That dress is special, very special!”

“The Gold Coast Dress girl is going to drama town,” Mary reckons, “to meet her husband, her Prince Regent! She’s the new Queen Charlotte.” There’s rapturous applause and a standing ovation as Mary takes her famous runway bow closing the show. Mary ends, “I have to thank God for making my hands! Thank God for such a blessing. Nobody’s getting my crown! Bye!”

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The Pig Restaurant + Rooms Bridge Kent

Globetrotters

Not another fabulous weekend! Never ones to fall for a pig in a poke, yet based on recommendations alone we daringly accept an invite to lunch on the eve of the 13th Sunday After Trinity at the unknown terrain of The Pig somewhere beyond Canterbury. We haven’t been this excited since the Montenegrin Government invited Forbes Magazine and Lavender’s Blue to cover their burgeoning tourism economy. Thankfully, this part of Kent turns out to live up to its reputation as the Garden of England. Or in The Pig’s case, the Kitchen Garden of England. The only sow’s ears are on the metal pigs guarding the entrance door. This restaurant and rooms are one of a litter of eight scattered across the English riviera. Definite articled single animals are the whole rage in hospitality nomenclature these days. There’s The Dog (much raved about gastro in Wingham near Bridge). Or The Newt (hotel of the media moment in Bruton, Somerset). Then The Rabbit (a retake of the late 20th century former Templeton Hotel in Templepatrick, County Antrim).

Lunch at The Pig is on a vast verandah and we mean vast. We’re soon persuaded to join the 25 Mile Wide Club, a long held ambition. Our menu is sourced from within a 40 kilometre radius. Suppliers include Kent Crisps (1.5 kilometres away); Simpsons Wine Estate (four kilometres); Core Farm Juice (6.5 kilometres); The Cheesemakers of Canterbury (12 kilometres); Ellies Dairy (25 kilometres); The Potato Shop (32 kilometres); and Turners Cider (39 kilometres). The rule is somewhat bent by inclusion of the Glenarm Estate (610 kilometres away in Northern Ireland) but Lord Dunluce does deliver the best beef in Britain. We pig out on all four courses of honking good portions, going the whole hog. Our starter is sourced from four metres away: the verandah overlooks the Mushroom House. Later, coffee comes with – what else? – piggy fours. Postprandial drinks are served while we’re resting our trotters on fashionably weathered timber deckchairs on the lawn. How very Lavender’s Blue. Post postprandial drinks are on the beach later, watching another Turner sunset, gazing wistfully towards Calais.

Bridge Place as The Pig was once known is a Grade II* Listed Building. The Listers state: “An L shaped building which is all that remains of a large mansion built by Sir Arnold Braems in the late 17th century, the remainder having been demolished… between 1704 and 1729. Red brick. Brick pilasters flank each window bay. Bracketed wood eaves cornice. Brick stringcourse. Steeply pitched hipped tiled roof. The north or entrance front has two and a half storeys. Two hipped dormers… Five windows, irregular, with mostly casements with wooden mullions and transoms, some small square leaded panes but two bung sash windows with glazing bars. Some of the windows at the east end are dummies and were probably blocked when sash windows were inserted in the east front. Rusticated stone doorway with keystone. The east front has two storeys, attic and basement. Four windows and two hipped dormers, windows having glazing bars and hung sashes. The interior has unusual carved cornices in two rooms and two painted stone fireplaces.” And what an architectural remainder! The gloriously atmospheric interiors are jazzed up with clubby antiques.

Framed flyers next to the Burlington Patent Cisterns in the timber beamed cellar bathrooms are a reminder of the former life of the house: “Bridge Place Country Club. Dance or drink, and if you wish, dine in this picturesque old manor. You may drink longer with our supper license. Ladies may come unescorted if they wish: many do!” Forthcoming attractions in 1968 included The Christmas Carnival, Boxing Night Ball and a New Year’s Eve Party with guest musicians Spencer Davis and Long John Baldry. The Pig continues this partying tradition for the escorted and the unescorted, revving it up a notch or two. As the Minister of Sustainable Development and Tourism Pavle Radulović informed us over dinner in Podgorica: “It’s all about knowing how to cater for the needs of high net worth individuals.” We’ve a feeling this isn’t our last fabulous weekend visiting The Pig at Bridge!

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La Divine Comédie Demeure Privée + Spa Avignon + Animals

The Certainty of Chance  

Another week, another all suites hotel. Hosts Giles Jauffret and Amaury de Villoutreys’ residence in a walled garden hidden down a laneway behind tall wooden gates in the honeycomb coloured city of Avignon always proves the perfect getaway. “Being a relatively small residence, we can focus on our guests,” says Giles. “The real luxury is being able to receive them as friends, and to have time for each one on an individual basis. We present our house more as a family home than a hotel. We wanted to share our French history, passion for art and l’art de vivre with others.” There are 42 watercolours of the city of canals in the Venetian Suite. The Naples Suite is hung with Neapolitan gouaches. And then there are the animals. Whether statues or the real thing, from a stuffed horse to a hatted stone dog, Persian cats to Weimaraner dogs, they all match the décor.

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Zaha Hadid Architects + Modern Art Museum Shanghai

The World From An Aeroplane Known

The only club you’ll find these days on Upper Street is the sandwich variety but what Islington lacks in nightlife it more than makes up for with the daytime artisanal individuality that’s packed into Camden Passage. This pedestrianised paradise may be parallel with Upper Street but that’s where the connection ends: the only chain you’ll find on Camden Passage is a handmade piece of jewellery. The Segal family run restaurant Frederick’s has graced Camden Passage for more than half a century. Its spacious light filled contemporary interior, lending regularity of form to fitness of function, comes as a revelation after the decorative three bay Victorian street front.

We’re here for lunch and a launch in the private dining room which opens onto an anticipatory strip of lawn. “This is our first event out for a year!” welcomes Patrik Schumacher, Principal, Zaha Hadid Architects. “We’ve gathered some friends to celebrate with us the remote opening of ‘ZHA Close Up – Work and Research’, Zaha Hadid Architects’ first exhibition in mainland China. We got our first professional breaks in China – we’ve so many projects there now.” During a Le Chêne Marchand Sancerre reception we’re treated to a live screening of the sell out exhibition at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai.

“The Chinese are just loving Zaha Hadid Architects’ work,” promises Shai Baitel, Artistic Director, MAM Shanghai. “This exhibition shows how it is global and timeless. The work is never compromising, always creating a new language. Today’s dessert is inspired by Zaha Hadid: geometric shaped pastries brushed with a very bitter Iraqi oil!” He proclaims, “Multisensory is all good!” as we receive a spray of Zaha’s fragrance.

“Zaha continually pushed forward; she was always evolving,” Shai summarises. “Geography versus movement translates into this scent. It contains Indian and Saudi oud; the mixologist is French; and it is made in Italy. Zaha was enigmatic: she was very feminine but never married. This fragrance is genderless.” And what fills the air is an abstract fifth dimension built upon organisation and articulation; organised articulation; articulated organisation.Órla Constant has flown in from Lady Kitty Spencer’s wedding to join our table. “Kitty wore three wedding dresses on the day: all Dolce + Gabbana. She was like a sublime Cinderella!” As for Zaha: “I was so privileged to have met her. She’s left such a legacy.” Órla is Relationship Director of Centrepoint. “Prince William chose us as his first charity. He’s very emphatically linked to us and the young people. He’s an amazing ambassador. We’re really out there as a charity!”

Zaha Hadid Architects Director Woody Yao also joins our table. He’s back from the 10th anniversary of the opening of Roca Showroom in Imperial Wharf which he designed with fellow Director Maha Kutay. That opening party seems like a hot minute ago. “I joined Zaha’s practice in 1994,” Woody relates. “She was one of the most genius architects of all time. The way we move around is all about Zaha genius. She stuck to her authentic voice. Zaha inspired generations of architects. She’s in our DNA! Technology changes; so does the way we do drawings but we carry that same spirit. We’re more like a movement than a style.”

“Architecture frames social interaction,” writes Patrik in his 2012 Volume II The Autopoiesis of Architecture. “The design environment matters: it frames all interactions. Only on the basis of the designed environment as complex systems of frames can society be reproduced on the level of complexity it has attained.” One chapter is titled “World Architecture within World Society”. Today is a global adventure: the world from a virtual aeroplane known.  Everywhere outside Frederick’s­­­, floodlights rake the sky.

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Ireland’s Blue Book + Bishop’s Gate Hotel Derry Londonderry

Merry Girls

“The sun always shines on the righteous!” claims hotelier Astrid Bray and sure enough the clouds fade to reveal an unblemished cobalt blue sky over the Capital City of Northwest Ulster. For once it’s not “foundering” as the locals would say. Depending on your persuasion, the name of this place is a four syllable binational portmanteau (Londonderry), a three syllable aristocratic surname (Londond’ry) or a rationalist nationalist two syllables (Derry). The city is one of two in Northern Ireland to share its name with its host county; Armagh does as well (Antrim doesn’t count as it is a mere town and county).

We’re here for Sunday morning sunny side up (eggs benedict with halloumi) breakfast at Bishop’s Gate Hotel next to one of the arched entrances to the Walled City. This much praised hotel is a member of Ireland’s Blue Book. We’re no strangers to the collection. Recent jaunts have included Belleek Castle, Ballina, County Mayo; Astrid’s favourite Bushmills Inn Hotel, County Antrim; Castle Grove, Ramelton, County Donegal; Coopershill House, Riverstown, County Sligo; Castle Leslie, Glaslough, County Monaghan; Dunbrody House, Arthurstown, County Wexford; The Merrion Hotel, Dublin; and the truly majestic Marlfield House, Gorey, County Wexford.

Sisters Margaret and Laura Bowe are joint châtelaines of Marlfield. Laura is Chairperson of Ireland’s Blue Book. “Now entering its 47th year,” she explains, “our collection of properties and restaurants continue to offer luxurious, memorable and unique experiences across the length and breadth of the island of Ireland… We are very proud of our chefs and patron chefs, with many of our restaurants boasting one and two Michelin stars.”

Guests at Bishop’s Gate Hotel are greeted by a framed picture of a quote by the sage Madame Lily Bollinger, clearly not the abstemious sort: “I drink when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it, unless I’m thirsty.” Equally educational are a series of framed architects’ drawings illustrating the genesis of the architecture of the hotel and other significant buildings in Derry.

Originally two townhouses dating from the 1800s, the site was purchased by the Northern Counties Club at the end of that century. International architect Alfred Forman transformed the private residences into the members’ club. The new owners have retained a clubby feel to the hotel with well stocked bookshelves displaying photos of Northern Counties Club visitors such as Winston Churchill, William Butler Yeats and Derek Hill. And they serve great grub.

Like all cultural tourists to the city, we ask our waitress for directions to the Derry Girls mural. “Not a bother!” she enthuses. “Just like a lollypop lady I’ll direct you!” Her shortcut is through the rear of the hotel. “This room used to be a garden and that’s a covered up well in the corner. The house where the hotel is now was used to hold prisoners during the Siege of Derry. They were able to travel underground from here to a well on Shipquay Street and from there across to boats on the River Foyle to escape.”

Before the very much larger than life mural, we’re off for alfresco mid morning coffee in the Hidden City Café. Outside seating is in the adjacent Garden of Reflection decorated with Tim Ward’s glass artwork. The west bank enclave surrounding Bishop’s Gate Hotel has a real Georgian Dublin meets bohemian Galway vibe. So much history. But the question on everyone’s lips is when is the third television series of Derry Girls coming?

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Art Design Luxury People

Mary Martin London + Cat Couture

The Catwalk

Zelda Blakley is the latest top model to don Mary Martin London haute couture. So what does Zelda have to say about her new outfit? “This ballgown is simply purrfect! I’m feline very elegant. I’m like the cat that got the cream!”

“Seriously though,” Zelda purrs, “In the words of my favourite French philosopher Roland Barthes, ‘Fashion the myth… at the very moment it produces… attempts to substitute its artifice, that is, its culture, for the false nature of things; it does not suppress meaning; it points to it with its finger.’ Or rather, claw.”