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Corinthia Hotel Whitehall London + Crystal Moon Lounge Sparkling Afternoon Tea

Midday Follies

“Love is patient, love is kind.” Corinthians 13:4

The Victorians were radical about town planning. In 1874 the Jacobean Northumberland House just north of the Thames opposite Waterloo in central London was swept away to create Northumberland Avenue. It would be another seven decades before Listing to protect British heritage would come into place. Manolo Guerci records in London’s Golden Mile (2021), “Northumberland House is the westernmost of the Strand palaces, one of the last to be erected and the last to disappear, with a history that spans nearly three centuries.” Tall buildings sprung up along this broad boulevard running from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Embankment. Metropole Hotel would soon become one of the impressive additions to this new townscape.

Francis Fowler (circa 1819 to 1893) and James Ebenezer Saunders (1829 to 1909) are not household names but they were clearly talented architects. Metropole Hotel commissioned by the Gordons Hotels Group was their design. Both men were members of the Metropolitan Board of Works (the forerunner to London County Council) although later removed for corruption. The 600 bedroom Metropole Hotel swung open the doors in 1886 to Savile Row frock coated gentlemen and their Liberty parasol holding ladies. “Meet at the Metropole” became a high societal signifier saying.

The hotel’s proximity to Whitehall Government Offices and the Palace of Westminster meant it was commandeered in both World Wars. In 1936 the building was purchased by the Ministry of Defence and remained in government use until the Crown Estate sold it in 2007. Four years later, the 283 bedroom Corinthia Hotel swung open the doors of the former Metropole building and the adjoining 10 Whitehall Place to Boss suit wearing gentlemen and their Balenciaga bag holding ladies. “Call by the Corinthia” has become a high societal signifier saying.

A storied site history includes Sir Winston Churchill watching the end of World War I street celebrations on 11 November 1918 from the windows of the building. In the 1920s the Metropole was well known for its Midnight Follies cabaret. Spies used one of the rooms and a network of underground tunnels led to government properties nearby. Another room was dedicated to monitoring UFOs. Sir Conan Doyle was a frequent guest: The Sherlock Holmes Pub on Northumberland Street is named after the author’s most famous literary creation. The press conference in James Bond movie Skyfall is set in the hotel.

Corinthia Hotel is an urban château, an impressive wedge of late Victorian architecture terminated by a bowed corner overlooking Whitehall Gardens. A double height oriel bay window projects over the main entrance on Northumberland Avenue. Pairs of Ionic (not Corinthian!) pilasters with swagged capitals frame the fully glazed doors. The basement and double height ground floor of the main block are faced in white stone; the upper five floors are faced in golden stone. The adjoining block is fully faced in white stone. Francis and James Ebenezer didn’t hold back on ornamentation, designing heavily decorated elevational grids of cornices and pilasters and window surrounds. A double row of dormer windows in the steep pitched roofs (some covered by fish scale tiles) is sandwiched between two storey high chimneystacks.

Afternoon tea is one of the truly quintessential British traditions. Top London hotels like to give it a quirky take and Corinthia is no exception. A chilled bottle of Lysegrøn, a Copenhagen Sparkling Tea, is the original accompanying elixir for the dry curious. As the sommelier pops the cork, a fresh citrus and green tea scent is released. The lively taste has notes of lemon grass and orange peel. There are long lasting hints of Darjeeling and green apple.

Hierarchically uniformed staff lead guests up and into the Crystal Moon Lounge named after the 1,001 crystal Baccarat chandelier hanging from a central seven metre diameter glass dome. “There’s just one red diamond orb,” the restaurant manager points out. “That’s appropriate for Valentine’s Day! We are using red striped fine bone china today too.” Ah, Valentine’s Day, the celebration of romance named after the saint whose remains are in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, Dublin. Romantic gestures will end with the party favour: a red box of English breakfast tea. “Would you like newspapers?” The Financial Times and Telegraph are delivered to the table. So is The Column, the hotel magazine. One of the waitresses is a fellow Emerald Fennell fan. “Wasn’t Saltburn just the best film? I’m off to see Wuthering Heights on my own later. I can’t wait!”

A glass of hot black Alfonso tea is the liquid amuse bouche. And then a neat row of finger sandwiches arrives (crusts are for starlings). Clarence Court egg mayonnaise with truffle on sourdough bread; Secret Smokehouse smoked salmon, nori and lime on brioche bread; and salted cucumber, chilli and coconut yoghurt on onion bread. Turns out coronation pepper is the new coronation chicken. The sandwich selection is bottomless: this is gonna take time. Cancel the matinée!

A waitress presents a white box of plain and sultana scones with organic strawberry jam and blackcurrant and Star Anise jam with Cornish clotted cream. For a moment, it’s like being teleported to a Week St Mary tearoom. The serving staff are all rather wonderful and good fun. Linen napkins are continually folded and laid; the tablescape constantly updated. “More Milk Oolong?” China is having a fashion moment.

Somebody strikes up chords and chromatics on the grand piano: I Can’t Help Falling In Love with You; I Will Always Love You; You’re Too Good to Be True … An unfallen avalanche of sweets appears. The yellow fruit finds a theme in lemon drizzle cake (an Irish country house favourite) and calamansi cheesecake (Philippine lemon). Apple and Speculoos (Belgian and Dutch crunchy delights) gâteau; pistachio and white chocolate cookies; salted caramel and milk chocolate tart; and vanilla religieuse all take the biscuit. In a good way.

“Afternoon tea is our signature service,” explains the Director of Food and Beverage Daniele Quattromini. “The Crystal Moon Lounge is right here in the middle of the hotel. It’s such a unique space. And we’re fortunate to have a designated time and space for afternoon tea. Our Baccarat crystal champagne flutes match the chandelier above. We have three antique trolleys from the 1920s.” A temporary display of photographic portraits by Lorenzo Agius adds familiar faces to the surroundings.

Corinthia Sparkling Afternoon Tea is one of hundreds of elevated experiences available through SupperClub Dining and Lifestyle Concierge. The Abu Dhabi based company offers members an international luxury range of buffets and brunches, tables and trips, midweek getaways and weekend spas. Just some of the other participating hotel groups include Four Seasons, Mövenpick, Raffles, Rosewood, Sofitel, Waldorf Astoria. SupperClub always lives up to its tagline: “Exclusive benefits, curated offers and frictionless bookings all in one seamless ecosystem.”

In Betjeman Country (1985), Frank Delaney writes about the poet and architecture critic Sir John Betjeman. Frank notes, “Outside in the sunlight, Whitehall shimmers impersonally … ‘Just as an old church is the history of its parish in terms of stone, so is Whitehall the embodiment of England,’ Betjeman wrote carefully. ‘The weakness of this analogy is that whereas most churches are open for the public to inspect, it is well nigh impossible to see inside Whitehall.’” The conversion of this secretive office block back to a hotel, 140 years after it first opened to the public, allows access once more to one of the vast stone buildings of this historic quarter. Corinthia Hotel has added personality, reinstating palatial glamour to Northumberland Avenue. The Financial Times review of the newly released film Wuthering Heights is a reminder love doesn’t always reach perfection. Unlike Sparkling Afternoon Tea in the Crystal Moon Lounge.

Upon leaving, the pianist Kevin Lee plays Moon River, keeping the crepuscular mood lit. He quips, “I’ve done the maths. You’re too young to remember this!” Quite the exit.

“Love never fails.” Corinthians 13:8

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Luxury Town Houses

Wimereux + Lavender’s Blue

L’Été le Plus Merveilleux

“Yes, next summer will be wonderful.” Monsters by Emerald Fennell, 2015

The Opal Coast is yet again where all the big hitters are headed as the mercury rises and if it was good enough for Napoléon III … Wimereux has glamour in spadefuls.

Frédéric Debussche et al write in Le Guide Boulogne-Sur-Mer, 2013, “To the north of Boulogne, beyond Pointe de la Crèche, extends the pretty seaside resort of Wimereux, established as a commune in 1899. Until then, the site constituted the maritime fringe of Wimille, where the nobility of Boulogne built opulent castles including Lozembrune. Established in an indentation of the coast, Wimereux was until the middle of the 19th century both the outpost and the extension of the Boulogne defence. Napoléon I built a point there and stationed 8,000 men as part of the Boulogne Development Camp. It was on the beach that his nephew Louis Napoléon Bonaparte ran aground in 1840 during his attempted coup d’état. After the Second Camp of Boulogne, led by the latter who became Napoléon III, Wimereux became a popular vacation spot. A casino and sumptuous hotels stand on the seafront and contribute to the emergence of the seaside resort whose appeal has never waned and in which the numerous Belle Époque villas were spared by the bombings of the last war.”

Benoît Diéval of the Pas-de-Calais Tourist Office doesn’t hold back: “Wimereux is timeless and utterly ravishing! It might be the oldest of our seaside resorts, but what panache! Wimereux was officially established by a decree issued by Napoléon I ordering the foundation of a town along the River Wimereux. It really came into its own during the Second Empire with the extension of the Boulogne to Calais railway line and the popularity of sea bathing. Wimereux continues to seduce visitors.” In 1867, Wimereux became a stop on the Paris to Calais line.

It’s a tiny town of vibrant villas and blue and white beach huts. At the end of the 19th century, exuberant Anglo Norman terraces, Art Deco villas, Gothic compressions of châteaux and actual châteaux were built along the seawall and accompanying grid of streets. Houses representing the tastes and foibles of some residents navigating their ascent up the social hierarchy, others plateauing. The architecture is more colourful than its English counterparts – late Victorian and Edwardian – with gaily painted half timbered gables and ceramic tiled walls. Balconies and bow windows and towers and turrets spring up and out in all directions.

In 1900 the beach huts were erected in a long row, sometimes two deep, along the promenade La Digue. Their names on a central stretch are Anne Florence; Le haut Courtil; Manou; La Flambée; Les Sternes; Bon Accueil; Antoinette; Horizon; Le Plessis; Lalot; Régina; Notre Dame des Dunes; Les Perles; Mickey; Graziella; Rud Vent; Madame Claude; Bonne Maman; L’Arche; Avant la Tempête; Charlotte; Sabine; Kerida; La Marmaille. A door sign on one hut states: “C’est pas Versailles ici!”

QR Codes on the pillars of some of the villas link to Valorisons Wimereux. This heritage society provides details of the architectural history of the town, emphasising its stylistic variety. A petite two storey gabled rendered house with single storey wings: “Napoléonette is one of the oldest villas in Wimereux. It was built in 1867 for Jean Lartigue, a senior civil servant.” A three storey over raised basement rendered house with a corner tower: “La Malouine is named after the first owner’s mother who was from St Malo. This magnificent Art Deco villa of 1910 has survived the wars.”  A squarish two storey house with a semicircular pediment: “Sans Adieu was built in 1913 by the architect Emile Vandenbeusch as a second home for Paul Vermelle of Lille. It is a resolutely modern house for its time, made of local stone.” A substantial two and a half storey red brick and stone house: “Villa Le Clos Flamand was built in 1922 by the architect Charles Bourgeois for the Lesay family of Lille.”

Rue Carnot is the classy shopping street which bisects the town roughly north to south. Purveyors of fine food include the charcuterie La Belle Viande and the chocolaterie Chocolat de Beussent Lachelle. Wimereux is blessed with four glorious Channel beaches. The sandy Plage de Wimereux is the most central. Plage Nord is separated from Plage de Wimereux by the River Wimereux. Plage du Club Nautique, a mix of sand and pebbles, is for water sports. Sandy and pebbly Plage Dunes Slack is close to the cliffs. Benoît Diéval is right. Wimereux is timeless and utterly ravishing!

Yes, this summer in Hauts-du-France is monstrously wonderful.

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Saltburn + Drayton House Lowick Northamptonshire

The Go Betweeners

The beautiful Rosamund Pike is such a talented comedic British actress that somehow channelling Lady Elspeth Catton she even makes naming a gravestone font “Times New Roman” sound hilarious. If you’ve heard that the film Saltburn is Brideshead Revisited on a high, The Go Between on a low or The Shining somewhere in between, think again. Writer Director Emerald Fennell’s dazzling genius is to create her own genre of thriller-comedy-romance-drama-gorefest while breaking taboos you didn’t even know existed. And then to line up la crème de la crème of British acting (Rosamund, Carey Mulligan and co) and emerging Irish talent (Barrie Keoghan and Allison Oliver). Only Emerald could musically bookend to perfection a film using Handel’s Zadok the Priest and Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor – from majestic hauteur to killer moves.

Daughter of the jewellery and silverware designer Theo Fennell, she confides, “I love my name. I think it’s all the things perhaps that I am which is unironic, unsubtle and slightly over the top!” True to form, Saltburn is unironic, unsubtle and, begging to differ, wildly over the top. Emerald goes forth, “I don’t think irony is helpful because it’s a lie, it’s double talk. Things do not have to be all done in the same way. You can be earnest, you can earnestly love things, you can be unsubtle, you can be overwrought, you can be melodramatic and gothic, you can be all those things. In terms of dramatic narratives, you’re looking to find the thing that gets inside you in a way that’s truly sexy and disturbing.”

Saltburn’s a period film set mainly way back in ye olde days of 2007 when everybody smoked indoors and got wings downing Red Bull and eyebrow piercings were à la mode. The opening scenes are all about antics in an Oxford college before things really hot up at the voluminous country house of Saltburn. Emerald chose Drayton House next to the picturesque village of Lowick in Northamptonshire to be Saltburn. She wanted somewhere that wasn’t well known or on the tourist trail. Drayton House is all that and more – it never was and never will be open to the public. The cast and crew spent a full summer here; then the six metre high wrought iron gates were locked for good. Artistic integrity is secured by shooting every Saltburn scene at Drayton. This avoids the visual confusion of Julian Fellowes’ Gosford Park film flitting between the exterior of Luton Hoo (Bedfordshire), the reception rooms of Wrotham Park (Hertfordshire), the bedrooms of Syon House (London) and a film studio kitchen at Shepperton Studios, London.

“A lot of people get lost in Saltburn,” warns Duncan the butler. The characters get lost in the mansion, lost in the maze, lost in the madness, but never in translation. There are references within references in the dialogue. Saltburn heir Felix Catton (played by Australian Jacob Elordi who delivers another masterful triumph of capturing the upper class English accent), nonchalantly boasts, “Evelyn Waugh’s characters are based on my family actually. Yeah, he was completely obsessed with our house.” Turns out Brideshead was really based on Saltburn not Castle Howard in Yorkshire! His father Sir James Catton amusingly played by Richard E Grant organises a house party and listing names of the invitees complains, “Stopford Sackville has cried off.” The Stopford Sackvilles are the owners of Drayton House.

To say Saltburn is beautifully shot is to say a Gainsborough portrait is well lit or Grinling Gibbons knew a thing or two about framing. The symmetry of reflection is just one technique used to great effect, whether a candlelit dinner table or moonlit pond. Those Caravaggio like stills. Shooting on squarish four by three aspect ratio film captures the height of the architecture and interiors. The closeted cloistered class obsessed quad of the Oxford college followed by the country house courtyard emphasises the exclusivity of this upper echelon world. There’s symmetry in the writing too: Felix takes his guest Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan accelerating from mellow to moody to murderous) on an introductory whirlwind tour of the house starting in the great hall. At the end of the film Oliver will dance the same route sans vêtements in reverse, ending in the great hall. What could possibly go wrong in such gorgeous surroundings? The clue is in the script notes, “It’s all beautiful but it’s about to get messy, fast.”

Drayton House was the cover girl of the March / April 1987 edition of Traditional Interior Decoration, a seriously seminal well written fabulously photographed short lived much missed magazine. The cover money shot of the swirling staircase was accompanied by a 14 page spread salivating over the ravishing rooms. “The grey stone Elizabethan east wall of Drayton,” writes Michael Pick, “masks the baroque façade of 1702 covering a late 13th century great hall which forms the core of the house.” The medieval hammerbeam roof of the great hall is concealed by a 17th century baroque barrel vaulted ceiling designed by William Talman, architect of Chatsworth in Derbyshire. The writer concludes, “It has never been a setting for country house parties …” Rarely has an ellipsis worked so hard or been so ominous.