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The Italian Party + Madame Tussauds Marylebone London

Ciao London

To roughly quote Oscar Wilde, always give into temptation. So when an invite arrives mentioning the Italian Embassy and the art of hospitality there’s only one response possible. Dining, drinking and dancing in the company of celebs and royals too? A dancefloor rammed with Damiano David lookalikes and young Sophia Lorens? What’s not to love.

So that’s how we find ourselves at Madame Tussauds on a rainy Tuesday night. Forever in our hearts, Diana Princess of Wales is throwing dagger looks at Queen Camilla. Or maybe Di is just checking out that mountain of Sardinian pecorino cheese? The wrinkle free future Queen Catherine the Great is as polished as ever. Such a pro!

Lady Gaga and Nicole Kidman are vying for attention. We nearly fall over a fellow photographer. She refuses to budge. Lewis Hamilton poses for us. There are a few celebs who must’ve passed their 15 minutes of Andy Warhol fame as we’re not quite sure of their names. Freddie Mercury looks great. So realistic. Flashing backdrops of the natural and architectural beauty of Italy are a reminder The Italian Party is sponsored by ENIT SPA, the tourism promotion department.

Suddenly Freddie bursts into life! He throws off his yellow jacket and starts belting out “I’m gonna have myself a real good time”. The Italian elite of London turbo charge onto the dancefloor. Next DJ Sharky B ups the tempo even more and the crowd are singing and bopping along to “Tonight’s gonna be the night”. Neon lights flash everywhere. Let’s misbehave.

Amidst an endless round of spinach tortellini and pumpkin gnocchi not to mention lava like flow of Funtanaliras Cantina del Vermnentino, the Italian Ambassador to the United Kingdom His Excellency Inigo Lambertini declares, “Our Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks English fluently, and that is not always the case for Italian politicians. There is strong cooperation and coordination between Rome and London, as well as numerous common interests. Italy is the second largest manufacturer in the European economy after Germany, so we are a natural partner for London.” Go Giorgio!

“You have to really be here to experience it” is the tagline of Sardegna Turismo. The same could be said for this party. It’s so easy to wax lyrical about all things Italian. Another sign flashes up. After party. To roughly quote Oscar Wilde again, don’t just exist get living.

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Pont Street + 11 Cadogan Gardens Hotel Chelsea London

Beautiful as a Story

“Architectural fashion is so often a reaction to what went immediately before. There’s even a perceptible difference between the father A W Pugin and the son E W Pugin’s work. The second generation architect’s designs are more rationalised,” believes artist and architectural publisher Anne Davey Orr. “Later, the use of concrete in the 20th century would issue in a much more open expression of materials and structure.”

The penultimate decades of the last two centuries both stuck to something of a “more is more” mantra. A sort of turn of the century syndrome. Eclecticism gone wild. Not without honour and slightly mad. Pont Street for the 1880s and 90s; Postmodernism for the 1980s and 90s. Out went conformity and goodbye to context; in came variety and hello to contrast. It was the ever inventive cartoonist Osbert Lancaster who came up with the name Pont Street Dutch due to the style flourishing in Chelsea. It could easily have been North German Revival, Flemish Revival or New Queen Anne. Or even Hans Town or Cadogan. Sir John Betjeman abbreviated it to Pont Street, making it even more geographically precise. He calls it the “new built red as hard as the morning gaslight” in his poem The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel. These days the SW postcodes are as golden as they are terracotta.

That’s the name explained but who invented the style? Architect John James Stevenson claimed Queen Anne as his creation. The practice Ernest George and Harold Peto produced some of the most overblown examples in Harrington Gardens but really the style was to become synonymous with the dominating work of Norman Shaw. Pont Street rang the death knell, scrawled the writing on the wall, beckoned the banshee for regular terraces, heralding an asymmetric age of individualism. “Look at me, look at me!” screams each house as the rooflines tipsily whoosh and swoosh over more Dutch gables than Keizersgracht. Against the navy canvas of a sun drenched winter’s morning, and to be repeated nine years later on a sun drenched summer’s morning, the red brick dressed with white stone renders Pont Street a patriotic tricolour.

Such strength of character allows 20th century blips such as the picture window spanning the penthouse of 41 Lennox Gardens to be immersed into the wider townscape. The houses celebrate their birthdays: “1884” shouts 25 Lennox Gardens from metre tall letters on its third floor. A few doors up, 43 Lennox Gardens announces to the world it’s a year younger. A wander in wonder along the streets of SW1 and SW3, the blessed boulevards of the Cadogan Estate, throws up a maximalist impure visual feast, an aesthetic eyeful, for the devil and angels are in the detail.

At a glance, here are some of the hyperactive highlights. Keyhold silhouette broken pediment copper domes in Sloane Gardens. Double decker dormers in Culford Gardens. Witch’s hat copper turrets where Draycott Place meets Blacklands Terrace. Quoined porthole windows peering out of 54 to 58 Draycott Place. A neo Elizabethan fretwork loggia hugging 3 Cadogan Gardens. Pierless Brighton balconies clinging onto 85 to 87 Cadogan Gardens. A château mansard atop 89 Cadogan Gardens. Twin Queen Anne fanlights surmounting the doorcase of 105 Cadogan Gardens. Stumpy Ionic pilasters holding up egg and dart capitals framing the porch of 60 Cadogan Square. A pair of ballsy busty bulbous oriel windows on the side elevation of 63 Cadogan Square. And that’s just at a glance.

Pont Street the address bisects Cadogan Place Gardens under the watchful eyes of the 18 storeyed 1961 Jumeirah Carlton Tower. But the great swathe of red is mostly found between Sloane Street and Lennox Gardens. The extremities of Pont Street dive back into stuccoland. A morning of architectural investigation must be balanced by an afternoon of gourmet indulgence. Historically, afternoon tea was the outcome of dinner slipping to beyond 7pm by the opening years of the 19th century. Hiccupping ladies at first surreptitiously downed tea and gobbled cake in their boudoirs after midday. By 1842, trailblazing trendsetting taboo busting gal about castle Anna Maria Russell, 7th Duchess of Bedford, was bolshily dispensing tea in her sitting room to fill the gap created by the evening meal becoming later and later thanks to gaslighting. Fast forward to the Pont Street era and both sexes were merrily letting rip into cucumber sandwiches and scones with clotted cream in the drawing room or on the lawn. Where better then to indulge than 11 Cadogan Gardens, the hotel launched by the eponymous Estate in 2012? A Darjeeling fuelled calorific high awaits: Carrot Cake Explosion; Chocolate Fudge Bar; Lemon Drizzle Loaf; Macarons; Raspberry Orange Battenburg.

The first part of the hotel’s name is mildly misleading: the reception rooms and 54 bedrooms are spread across four townhouses (“5, 7, 9 and 11 Cadogan Gardens” being something of a mouthful). Bright red brick with white trimmings, in some places to stripy effect (more bands than a 12th of July march); terracotta tracery and scrolls; rusticated Doric columns and shortened Ionic columns; rectangular metal balconies and semicircular brick balconies; windows of every frame and shape and type (more casements than a West Belfast cemetery; and again more sashes than a 12th of July march) and orientation (more than a Pride march in London); oriels, chamfered bays and rectangular bays; flat, round arched and segmental arched windows; mini, Dutch and swan neck gables; 11 Cadogan Gardens is as dynamic Pont Street as it gets. The last part of the hotel’s name is wildly accurate. It faces a densely treed green square. The only two London members of the exclusive Relais et Châteaux group are 11 Cadogan Gardens and its sister hotel further round the square, The Chelsea Townhouse.
The interior is just as eclectic. A maze of lacquered cloistered sequestered panelled hallways and lobbies and corridors and passageways leads into the consciously picturesque opalescent Drawing Room. Starched linen at the ready, afternoon tea awaits, designed to instil a divine inertia into the remainder of a stimulating day. Decked and bedecked, espaliered and jardinièred, the Terrace is tucked between the townhouses and the mews. Alive with remote anticipation, it’s a place to dwell on the meaningfulness of life. Another surprising place is the Versailles inspired Mirrored Hall, a space designed to contemplate the advantage of beauty. Monochromatic photographs of supermodels line the descending staircase to the basement gym. Oil paintings of aristos line the ascending staircase to the bedrooms. Souls of different ages bordering the universe in process of consummation. This hotel has a distinct and dynamic personality, one that is warm and sensuous.

Over to the father of town planning Manning Robertson of Huntington Castle, County Carlow, for some pontification on not just Pont Street but classification itself. Everyday Architecture, 1948, “Definitions of architecture are as unsatisfactory as any other expositions of the aim and meaning of the arts; but if architecture is to be alive at all it must clearly involve the erection of buildings to suit the demands of the period, and the embellishment of those buildings according to the dictates of the materials in use, the treatment being a direct reflection of the outlook of the epoch, based of course upon past work, insofar as it is applicable. We cannot say that the 19th century, which produced principally a dead copying of the past, did not reflect itself truly; it was, on the contrary, amazingly accurate in illustrating that the worship of material prosperity is not consistent with a high level of art.”

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Wilde Restaurant + The Westbury Hotel Dublin

Come What May

Oscar Wilde: “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” A walk down O’Connell Street and beyond is a walk down memory lane. Dublin is full of ghosts of built and once human form. Clery’s department store closed in 2015. Across the River Liffey, and up Grafton Street, there used to be two department stores facing one another. Switzer’s, once owned by Mohammed Al Fayad, disappeared in 1990 while Brown Thomas has kept going. In 2021, the Weston family sold Brown Thomas and Selfridges in London for a few billion euro to a Thai and Austrian consortium.

Tucked behind Grafton Street, Powerscourt Townhouse Centre is comfortingly still intact as the city’s most original shop and restaurant destination. Once the urban seat of the Wingfield family, it’s full of the exuberant 18th century plasterwork made popular by the Italian Francini brother stuccodores. Walking over the uneven Georgian floorboards along the galleries has the unsteadying feel of being on a slightly rocky ship. Round the corner the only evidence that Odessa bar and restaurant ever existed, never mind being the coolest hangout in town circa 2001, is the sign, and even that’s about to disappear. Also tucked behind Grafton Street is another institution that is very much alive and kicking: The Westbury Hotel, part of The Doyle Collection.

Opened in 1984, this 205 bedroom five star hotel is still highly recognisable even after several multimillion euro renovations. The first floor restaurant Wilde overlooks Balfe Street below. A conservatory was added to the restaurant during one of the renovations. The 90s apricot colour scheme, linen tablecloths and synchronised cloche lifting have all long gone. In their place is a chintz free interior and informal vibe. Cane chairs, fern patterned cushions, botanical prints and tiled floor are all reminders this is definitely conservatory dining. Or rather lunching.

Dublin’s most wonderful waitress is an El Salvadorian lawyer. “Over six million people are squeezed into 21,000 square kilometres. It’s the smallest country in Central America,” she relates. “But there are great places to stay on the Pacific coastline. El Tunco beach and La Tibertand port are two of my favourite places. Our nostalgic produce is horchata: it’s a drink made from a blend of spices and seeds such as morro, sesame and peanut. My family own businesses and there used to be a lot of extortion. That’s all gone: the new President and his strict regime clamping down on gangs has been a gamechanger. El Salvador is the first country to have made Bitcoin a legal tender.” It’s time to book flights with United Airlines.

The Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge, a couple of kilometres south of The Westbury, has not survived. An RTÉ news report broadcast in 1978, “Providing first class comfort for guests is the aim of Dublin’s newest hotel The Berkeley Court. It is the newest hotel owned by Pascal Vincent Doyle. At £25 a night for a single bed, the majority of us will never be able to afford its delights. The 200 bedroom hotel is situated on the corner of Shelbourne Road and Lansdowne Road. Inside, it provides the standard demanded by wealthy American and Continental guests. With an emphasis on first class comfort, the luxury hotel is indicative of the upward trend of tourism in Ireland. The hotel was formally opened by Minister for Tourism and Transport, Padraig Faulkner.” This fellow epitome of late 20th century glamour was demolished in 2016 and replaced by apartments – Ballsbridge is the best residential address in Dublin.

Wilde deserves a Michelin star, or rather Oscar! It’s the best thing since sliced sourdough (of which there is plenty). So how much is lunch per person? Well, the same price as checking in for six nights to The Berkeley Court. Circa 1978. After Wilde, we’ll walk past the Oscar Wilde statue on Merrion Square and then we’ll head to The Wilder Townhouse to get dolled up for a wild (no E) night out in town. But not before Taizé Prayer in Newman University Church on St Stephen’s Green. Oscar Wilde: “Memory … is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

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Glenveagh Castle + Derryveagh Mountains + Lough Beagh Donegal

Wild Geese

“To me how veritably a palace of enchantment” cries Edward Poe’s character William Wilson in The Fall of the House of Usher. Parts of Glenveagh Castle’s history are as dark as this horror (owner ‘Black Jack’ Adair’s land agent was murdered in 1861; a later owner Arthur Potter would disappear without a trace) but it enjoyed an Indian summer in the mid 20th century as a palace of enchantment. It is a castle in name only. Scots Irish landowner John ‘Black Jack’ Adair built it as a hunting lodge. Architect John Townsend Trench (Black Jack’s cousin) was instructed to use the Royals’ Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire as inspiration. The castellated house is much less chunky that its Scottish forerunner: the architect handles its massing well, no doubt in part due to the incremental building programme. The central house, started in 1867, was gradually extended with a variety of towers, completing in 1901.

Cast iron hoppers, corbelled bartizans, crenellated parapets, crow stepped gables, granite machicolations – the architect plundered the Scottish Baronial textbook to great effect. Perhaps he also read Oscar Wilde’s 1882 essay The House Beautiful, “The use of the natural hues of stone is one of the real signs of proper architecture.” The 16,000 hectare estate passed out of Adair ownership in 1929 when it was bought by the ill fated Harvard Professor Arthur Potter and his wife Lucy who together restored and redecorated the castle. Perhaps they read Oscar’s essay too for the décor follows his rule, “A designer must imagine in colour, must think in colour, must see in colour.”

Glenveagh Castle is too compact to fall under Annabel Davis-Goff’s category “impossible large houses” in her 1989 book about gentry in Ireland, Walled Gardens. But it does fit in with her description, “Even in the grander houses in Ireland there was rarely a bedroom with its own bathroom.” The house really came into its own when Henry McIlhenny bought it in 1937. The Bachelor Corridor is lined with appropriately single bedrooms while being light on en suites. The world (and only occasionally their partner) came to stay. Samuel Barber, best known for composing Adagio for Strings, was a frequent guest.

The American composer and pianist was also a gifted diarist, recording in 1952, “There are two towers in the castle, six drawing rooms, with fires always burning; so I confiscated one at once and messed it up PDQ with orchestration, paper, and pencils, et al, announcing that I would see no one until lunchtime; and I worked very well every day and almost finished two numbers of the ballet; lots of fun working at it. There was really no one to see for almost a week.” He continues, “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.” He notes, “We left Glenveagh after a week of candlight and peat and Gaelic twilight.”

Another guest was the highly amusing Rafaelle Duchess of Leinster. Writing in her 1973 entertaining autobiography So Brief a Dream, “I fell head over heels with this enchanting castle. Glenveagh is a divine place to stay. You couldn’t have a more charming host. His sense of things beautiful and comfortable make you want to stay forever. There was only one snag, the undercurrent that so often flows when the guests are more fashionable than friendly, and the host is elsewhere. Every night after dinner when we gathered in the lovely red room warmed by the sweet scented peat fire, you would be wise to see to it that you were the last to leave when it came to say goodnight.” Typically, there is something of a sting in the tail of her tale. Although that pales in comparison to the description of her disastrous wedding in Knightsbridge, London, “He and I walked up the aisle of Holy Trinity Brompton on a December morning in 1932 to the altar of doom ‘for better for worse’ … mainly for worse!”

Henry McIlhenny added more than just colour to the castle: he invested in Victorian paintings by Edwin Landseer, inserted marble chimneypieces salvaged from nearby Ards House in Creeslough, and created a series of extraordinary gardens (enlisting the expertise of leading landscapers Philippe Julian, Lanning Roper and Jim Russell) climbing up the purple headed Derryveagh Mountains and falling down to the eastern shore of Lough Beagh. Mock fortifications enclose a pool raised above the lapping water’s edge. The American tycoon donated the castle and estate to the Irish Government in 1983. Three years later he died just as Glenveagh National Park was opening to the public. Visiting this remote house set in a wilderness on a scorching hot summer day, it’s impossible not to be “married to amazement” to borrow Mary Oliver’s phrase from her 2004 poem Wild Geese.

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Desirée Shortt + 38 North Great George’s Street Dublin

China in Her Hands

“I’m a 20th century girl,” breathes Desirée Shortt. She spent the closing quarter of that century as Ireland’s most successful china restorer. Before that she worked abroad including in America and Britain. “Los Angeles was my love affair. London was my friend. And Dublin is my marriage.”

“I’m a Dub. I’m from Dublin 4.” She is sitting next to a roaring fire in her elegant raised ground floor drawing room. “My grandparents owned Montrose which then became the RTÉ television centre. The original house was built by the Earls of Pembroke in the 19th century. I grew up a couple of miles from there in a big house on Anglesea Road. I saw a lot of my grandparents – we went for lunch on Sundays and for Christmas and Easter. I was privileged.”

Desirée reminisces, “All I wanted as a child was food – extra jelly and cream! I remember the lunches with the butler Byrne and his wife Mrs Byrne who was the cook and two standing footmen and three housemaids and the chauffeur who drove the Rolls Royce. To me a garden meant greenhouses and five gardeners. Folie de grandeur!”

“I was spoiled! I ruled the house from the age of six. What I wanted I got. My father was 20 years older than my mother. He was 53 when I was born, she was 33; my only brother was eight years older than me so I don’t remember him very well as a child. The males didn’t really figure in my early life as far I was concerned. I was my mother’s pet lamb! I was mostly brought up by women – I went to Catholic convent schools.”

The fire continues to roar; seagulls are howling on the street beyond the two tall sash windows. Desirée suggests it was both a good start and maybe a bad start. “I had a privileged upbringing but a hard learning curve lay ahead of me. I had to go out into the real world. I was one of the first of my lot to go to London. And from London I went to the US. I arrived in New York and rode the Greyhound bus to LA. The timing was right – I lived in California for three years. Lot of sunshine, lots of yachts, lots of men!”

Ireland called her back. “My mother had died, and my father was ill. He was a very nice man – he died aged 87. And I thought now I’m free! I was so excited about going to Brussels to work in the Common Market. I was a secretary there but it wasn’t a great success. They all spoke English so I didn’t improve my French. I’d a French nanny growing up so I used to understand when my aunt and mother talked about me in French. ‘Très mauvais. Très très mauvais!’”

“Then reality struck. I needed to settle down – with a house not a husband.” Ireland called her back, this time for good. Desirée relates, “I was 34 and I didn’t want to get married. To me marriage is a cage. Someone opens the door and then the door is locked on you. I just wanted freedom. I didn’t want to pretend to be a good cook with five screaming kids and a boring husband and a mortgage and locked in a cage. Best thing I ever did was not get married. In those days married people were very suspicious of single women. Wives thought you were after their husbands.”

“My godfather Patrick Glynn was an eminent solicitor and he said to me, ‘You need to buy a nice new two bed apartment. Ladies do not buy houses on North Great George’s Street.’ So of course I bought this house the next day. I had friends who lived across the road. There was an elite group of us – we were hedonistic and had parties. One of them kept saying, ‘Why don’t you buy the house?’ It had been up for sale for five years. And I looked over at this place and there seemed endless people coming in and out and of course there were – 27 of them!”

“It was up for sale for five years. I thought, me? No! Go on. Me? No. So I woke up that morning and thought I’m going to buy it. I paid 8,000 punts and wrote a cheque.” That was in 1974. She says, “There were 27 sitting tenants. It took me 17 years to get them out.” The fire roars a little more. “Relationships were not good – they hated me. ‘That one – who does she think she is?’ I knocked on their doors and deliberately collected the rents once a week. Rent was 40 pence; the income for the house was 415 punts per annum. Somebody once said, ‘There are no flies on Desirée and if there are they’re paying rent!’”

An Irish Georgian Society grant helped pay towards restoration of the roof and repointing the brickwork: she is a great supporter of the Society. “Otherwise, the house was actually in quite good condition,” Desirée admits. “It was just tired. Decorating it was a huge job. I would finish work and spend all evening painting the rooms myself on a ladder. Even the three storey staircase hall with its six flights. I couldn’t afford a decorator. I painted the dining room with six coats and then a semi-lacquer coat.” At the end of the return is her kitchen. “That’s my nest, not that I cook.” And beyond that an exquisite town garden. “It’s all green and wonderful in the summer. I’m very keen on mirrors in gardens.” Climbers grow across the basement area.

“I now have five one bed apartments on the other floors. Rent is a bit more than it used to be. No flies! I’m a very good landlord and they are very good tenants. We respect each other and are very courteous. They have security of tenure. I live in the raised ground floor and first floor and the return and have the garden.” Georgian Dublin houses are built on a gigantic scale. Desirée’s reception rooms with their 4.3 metre high ceilings are more like state rooms. She explains, “My memory was very definitely dependent on that memory of all the rooms being big at Montrose. So in a funny way 100 years later I wanted to live in a big house! Of course, I didn’t realise you don’t live in a big house for free.” So she made the house work even harder, all 560 square metres of it.

“Greatly to my surprise I launched a restoration china studio in my basement. I hadn’t a clue about china – I didn’t know the difference between a cup and saucer! Just before that, I went to London and saw a sign at the V+A for ‘China Restoration’, and I thought why not? So I did the six week course and came back to Dublin and set up as a professional. I don’t like metal and I don’t like glass. But china grabbed me, I just felt the texture. The dealers soon knew I was special and the studio just took off. Dealers would buy something at an auction with a missing finger or missing head or missing something. And I saw the market for china restoration.”

Her past professional experience came in useful: “In California I had worked for McCann Erickson who were the top ad agency in the world. They had staff of 300 and that was just in one office. I knew I had to sell. I did the china restoration for 25 years – I had a staff of 28 and trained a total of 283 students.” The house was working hard but not hard enough: there were still flies on the principal two floors. “Location agencies started taking an interest in the house. They would ring me and say, ‘We have some American film clients at the airport. Could we come and have a look?’ So 36 films were set here.”

Desirée confides, “Stephen Fry was my favourite – I had lunch with him. He was dressed in full 19th century costume for a film about Oscar Wilde. And of course we had something in common straight away. The interesting thing is that this house was the home of Professor John Pentland Mahaffy, Oscar Wilde’s tutor. We had that discussion – he’s a brilliant conversationalist. I’m not too bad myself.” The builder and first occupant of the house was another distinguished Dubliner. Stuccodore Charles Thorpe [Thorp?} built the house in 1785; he would become Lord Mayor of Dublin 15 years later.

“I also hired out my reception rooms for dinner parties; when the Foreign Office had conferences what could they do with the wives? So the wives would come here – I could seat 40 in my dining room. I didn’t do the cooking, I left myself free. I hate cooking! I would buy in the wine and I had a team of waiters and caterers. I was free to wander around pretending to be the hostess and again amusing them. That was a huge success. I had big companies and small companies dine here too. I would say 10,000 people a year came through this house over four decades. Every room in this house works for a living.”

One evening, Desirée’s two occupations of china restoration and playing hostess clashed. “In 1985 the famous Chinese Warriors from Xi’an came to Dublin. There was a huge party of 400 guests at Royal Hospital Kilmainham. I went to the opening with an American house guest. That was fine. I came back home. I was giving a dinner party afterwards, as one did in those days. And the phone rang. ‘Two of the warriors have got broken, you must come to the museum now.’ It was a government minister. ‘I can’t, I’m having a dinner party,’ I replied. ‘We’ll pick you up in 10 minutes.’”

“My American house guest took over as host of the dinner party which he thought was great fun. He had a great time entertaining his pals in the house for the next three days. The taxi arrived and I spent three days at the museum representing the Irish Government. Scaffolding used for putting up lighting had collapsed hitting two of the figures and they were originals, not fakes. A Chinese professor arrived, not a word of English of course, we both smoked, we understood each other perfectly. All thanks to body language … and smoke rings!”

She recalls, “Because it was the Government, 10 workmen arrived in about four seconds. They built a support round the broken terracotta warriors. A full size horse head had come off one. When it was fixed and it came to having the support removed, that was the nastiest moment. ‘Please don’t let the head come off!’ After the restoration was complete I asked could I publish this and the Government said no, it would be too embarrassing. No publicity and I thought, fair enough. So I picked up the phone, picked my people, and within 20 minutes the whole of Dublin knew exactly what had happened. That was great fun and about four years later I was lucky enough to go to China. And I went to Xi’an which was fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and I swear one of the warriors winked at me! I’m probably the only European who has ever been allowed to touch them.” In 38 North Great George’s Street, the fire is still roaring.

Desirée Shortt, a 20th century girl still enjoying life in the 21st century. “I’m lucky I have my own little bubble – somebody cooks for me, somebody drives for me, and I’ve very good friends.” And a very good 18th century house in the city she loves most.

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Architecture People Restaurants Town Houses

Deal + The Doors

The Importance of Being Very Earnest

Deal Town Kent Doors © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Douglas isn’t just the capital of the Isle of Man. But Deal sure is the capital of Kent.

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Architecture People Restaurants Town Houses

Deal Town Kent + Lady Dalziel Douglas

The Importance of Being

Deal Town Kent Beach © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

It’s not every coastal town that has a restaurant run by a descendent of the lover of the greatest wit of the 19th century. But Deal in Kent isn’t just another coastal town. It’s chockablock with listed buildings without being chocolate box boring. The upwardly mobile relaunch of The Rose (firmly prefixing gastro to pub) complete with Tracey Emin prints hanging on the walls is simply the latest proof in the pudding (St Émilion chocolate torte tonight) of Deal’s rising status as Battersea-on-Sea. Roast Jerusalem artichokes with shallots and hazelnut dressing provide more memorable menu moments.

Deal Coastline Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Boats © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Sunrise © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Pier © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Castle Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Esplanade © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent House © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Houses © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Townhouse © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Rose Pub Interior Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Portraits © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Photo © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

On a rainswept late Friday evening, The Black Douglas along Deal’s esplanade is an atmospheric hive of joyful activity. “My name’s pronounced ‘DL’,” says owner Lady Dalziel Douglas. There are a few visual giveaways. One is the sepia soaked photographs of distinguished aristos in court dress – lots of ermine on display. Another couple of clues are Dalziel’s cheekbones to slice Manchego with and her piercing blue eyes. She is of course the great great niece of Lord Alfred Douglas, the dashing poet better known as ‘Bosie’, Oscar Wilde’s amour. “My great great great uncle, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, invented the Queensberry Rules of Boxing!” smiles Dalziel, pointing to one of the photographs. The Douglas clan motto is Jamais Arrière which means ‘Never Behind’. True to form, Dalziel confirms, “We were one of the first places to open in Deal of this nature. We’ve been here for 14 years and it’s given other people confidence to open up similar businesses.”

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Portrait @ Lavender's Blue

Just as The Rose and The Black Douglas have weekend dinners down to a tea tee, Deal Pier Kitchen upholds the great British breakfast tradition with a twist or rather lots of vegan twists. Eating the first meal of Saturday to the rhythm and splash of lapping waves is a must. Suspended over the sea at the end of a 1950s concrete pier, the café is in a timber and glass pavilion designed by Níall McLaughlin in 2008. The architect has continued Deal’s centuries old dedication to romantic maritime architecture.

Dalziel Douglas The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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Architecture Art People

Trevor Newton + Dartmouth House Mayfair London

The First September

The new year really starts each autumn. As the first golden leaves fall, where is it possible to see The Wallace Collection, Sir John Soane’s Museum and a swathe of Parisian hôtels particuliers in one room? In the Long Drawing Room of Marchmain Dartmouth House, on the same street where Oscar Wilde once resided in Mayfair, but only if you’re on the exclusive invitation list to the EV (Evening View). This house beautiful is not open to the public. Interior Impressions, a major exhibition of drawings by Trevor Newton is presented and curated by Anne Varick Lauder. It’s the first monographic exhibition of the accomplished artist in eight years.

New York born London based Dr Lauder, who has held curatorial positions in the J Paul Getty Museum, the Louvre and the National Portrait Gallery, announces, “We are delighted to be in the Long Drawing Room for the Private View of new drawings by the English topographical artist Trevor Newton. All 60 new works are of grand or highly individual British and European interiors from Versailles to The Ritz, to the Charleston of the Bloomsbury Group and the intimate Georgian houses of Spitalfields. It is therefore appropriate that this invitation only exhibition should take place in one of the finest private interiors in Britain.” She adds, “Interiors within interiors!” A 21st century – and for real – Charles Ryder.

Trevor studied History of Art at Cambridge, later becoming the first full time teacher of the subject at Eton. A present of The Observer’s Book of Architecture for his eighth birthday spurred a lifelong interest in buildings and their interiors. Rather than pursuing modish photorealism, he sets out to capture impressions of a place, often adding whimsical details imagined or transposed from other sources. His atmospheric renderings experiment with the interplay of light and reflection. Dense layers of mixed media – body colour, pen and ink, wash, watercolour and wax resist crayon – evoke a captivating sense of the aesthetic and nostalgic. His framing portrays a theatrical awareness of view: how the onlooker visually enters the room. There’s an enigmatic absence of people yet signs of habitation: a glass here; a magazine there. Trevor says, “My drawings are attempts to convey the emotions generated by art and architecture.” Emotional revisits. Anne considers, “It’s like he redecorates on page.”

Fellow alumnus Stephen Fry recalls, “While many of his contemporaries at Cambridge were Footlighting or rowing, Trevor seemed to spend much of his time drawing and painting. His specialities then were lavish invitations for May Week parties, illustrated menus for Club and Society dinners, posters and programmes for plays and concerts, along with a highly individual line in architectural fantasy drawn for its own sake and for the amusement of his friends. He managed to combine the frivolous and the baroque in a curious and most engaging manner: Osbert Lancaster meets Tiepolo. Trevor is still drawing and painting as passionately as ever and though the content of his work may be more serious, in style and execution it still has all the youthful energy and verve which characterised it over 30 years ago.”

Dartmouth House is something of a hôtel particulier itself. A château-worthy marble staircase and 18th century French panelling in the reception rooms add to the cunning deceit that just beyond the Louis Quinze style courtyard surely lies the Champs-Élysées. The Franglais appearance isn’t coincidental. In 1890 architect William Allright of Turner Lord knocked together two Georgian townhouses for his client, Edward Baring (of the collapsible bank fame) later Lord Revelstoke, to create a setting for his collection of French furniture and objets d’art. Ornament is prime. Dartmouth House is now the HQ of the English Speaking Union. Except for tonight. When it’s utterly-utterly Great Art Central.

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Architecture

Deal Town Kent + The Black Douglas Coffee House

East Coast Cooler

It’s the last weekend of summer. As the train meanders past the chalky White Cliffs of Dover we come over all Vera Lynn. Altogether now: “There’ll be love and laughter; and peace ever after…” Although it’s hard not to dream of the cliffs as topography’s answer to Fanny Cradock’s powdered cheekbones. Past Priory (no, that one, although smuggling is involved), our sun kissed naval base looms into view. Maybe not quite looms. Deal isn’t big. Nor raw. Deal meal. Puns (mostly) over, we’re here for the domestic architecture.

A tale of two towns. Kind of. A higgledly piggedly jumble of centuries old topsy turvy Georgian or Georgian faced townhouses squeezed between the esplanade and High Street contrasts with voluptuous Edwardian villas strung out along the coast. Of course that’s a gross oversimplification but wherever there’s pudding to be egged there’s Lavender’s Blue. Britain’s only brutalist pier doesn’t fit our narrative. Nor do the Brightonesque Regency houses. Nor does the tulip shaped Tudor castle. Ours is a binary filtered storyline of sepia saturated prose.

Close of play is more like end of day as a cricket match on the pebbly beach unfolds unabated through an unforgiving sunset. It is, though, a spectacularly balmy evening. We stroll past The Black Douglas Coffee House. Named after a tyrannical 14th century Scottish ruler, the surname is more closely associated with his descendant Bosie. It’s owned by Dalziel Douglas. Her partner is closing shop. “Come for breakfast tomorrow and Lady Douglas will give you the full history! She’s the great great niece of Bosie.” Oscar Wilde called the Douglas family a “mad, bad line”. The aptly black painted shopfront is in a quintessentially Deal block. Four buildings – four window levels – four eaves heights – four colours. All perceptibly lopsided, living in fear of the perpendicular, clinging to each other like tipsy aged fishwives.

We dive into the orb speckled alleyways behind Beach Street. No minimum distances between dwellings; no wonder everybody knows everybody. Tiny windows peep above pavements and a dusting of Dutch gables graces the slit of artists’ sky above. Christmas House; The Paragon; Steadfast; Tally Ho. Some have planchette plundered passageways; others, secret hidden rooms. Collectively, a smugglers’ paradise of the past. And if you didn’t benefit from ill gotten gains back then, there was still plenty of booty to be had. A poster on a wall announces:

“Wreck sale on the quayside of this port at 10 o’clock in the forenoon on the 24th day of April 1796. Part of the cargoes of ships that have recently come to grief in these parts. Consisting of: 56 Bales of Wool | 124 Deer Skins | 37 Cases of Flour | 9 Casks of White Lead | 287 Oak Handspikes | 21 Barrels of Tar | 341 Pieces of Cloth | 67 Articles of Pewter | 23 Barrels of Potash | 154 Pieces of Firtimber | 1 Open Boat | 16 Hatchets | 20 Casks of Cudbear | 112 Cases of English China | 45 Pipes of Linseed Oil | 209 Spills of Cotton Yarn.”

A poster on a bow window advertises the clandestine sounding Dining Club. Temptations listed include potato and mushroom terrine followed by roast mullet and pea fritter. Leaving the twisted grid of ghostly cross lanes behind, we head south. Between the two halves of the town we promenade past an antiques shop named 1815 in a building that looks 1915. The mesmeric shop window displays chandeliers, piers and a stuffed seagull. The art of the deal.

Beyond, the Edwardian villas are unabashedly self important, acutely aware they can be viewed from all angles unlike their narrow northern neighbours. Widows’ and Juliet balconies galore. There are terraces and balconies and verandahs and terraces on balconies on verandahs. One especially memorable house is crowned with a gloriously top heavy coven of witch’s hat roofs. Their inhabitants aren’t self important: they even say hello on the street. Goodness, this really isn’t London-on-Sea. Shame that discovering The Black Douglas was on our last night. But it’s not a deal breaker. We’ve an excuse to descend on Deal again. Not that one’s required. Last pun (for now). It’s a deal.

Categories
Design Luxury

Bourne + Hollingsworth Fitzrovia London

Most Flaunted

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Oracle of our orbit, balancing on a notional pedestal, we don’t need a doctorate in aesthetics to enjoy Bourne + Hollingsworth’s revamped salon. It’s the antithesis of a mesmeric void. Kaleidoscopic covered antique chairs and floral banquettes fill the space around the marble bar. Pink is the new black. As (once upon a time) MP Keith Vaz would say, “Let’s get this party started!” A quirky basement cocktail bar, it’s the perfect hideaway for a cocktail inspired foray into the far precincts of the mind. A shadowy cavalcade of pedestrians parades by at street level, marching marionettes unaware of the subterranean soirée underway underground. It’s time to let our hair down over a Rapunzel cocktail (a refreshing mix of Polish vodka, lemon, mint and a ginger kick). A Pink Mojito (agave tequila, fresh lime and mint coloured with cranberry) judiciously coordinates with the fuchsia hued fabric wallpaper. A Heisenberg Daiquiri (Jamaican rum shaken with Chartreuse, lime and blue falernum) is art in a glass. Unlike Oscar Wilde, we can live with the wallpaper of this haunt. Actually, we don’t want to leave.

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Architecture Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Mayfair + The Grosvenor Estate London

All That Glitters

1 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

“He walked, as was his custom, through the shaded streets and pleasant squares of Mayfair,” writes Michael Arlen in A Young Man Comes to London, 1932. “This corner of town was our hero’s delight. He loved its quiet, its elegance, its evocation of the past. Of Mayfair he wrote those stories which no editor would publish. In those stories he dwelt on the spacious lives of the rich and on the careless gaieties of the privileged.”

2 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

Mayfair has long been celebrated in literature, most famously in the 1890s in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and Lady Windermere’s Fan. This compact area, north of Piccadilly and west of Hyde Park, a patchwork of streets linking the generous squares of Grosvenor, Hanover and Berkeley, has been developed by several landlords  over the last few centuries, most notably the Grosvenor family. There are four “golden streets” of the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair and neighbouring Belgravia: Mount Street, Elizabeth Street, Motcomb Street and Pimlico Road.

10 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

Mount Street shines the brightest. East to west, it starts opposite Alfred Dunhill off Berkeley Square and ends at Grosvenor House Apartments, Park Lane. The hotel is on the site of the Grosvenor family’s original townhouse or rather town mansion. Edwin Beresford Chancellor records in 1908, “Park Lane is synonymous with worldly riches and fashionable life. Down its entire extent, from where it joins Oxford Street to the point at which it reaches Hamilton Place, great houses jostle each other in bewildering profusion on the eastern side while on the west lies the park with its mass of verdure and, during the season, its kaleidoscopic ever-shifting glow of brilliant colour.” Park Lane is London’s Park Avenue (Manhattan not Bronx).

9 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

5 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

Between the classical Protestant Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street and the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, known to all and sundry as “Farm Street” after its address, lie Mount Street Gardens. First laid out in 1890 on the site of a former burial ground, the gardens are now a sanctuary for locals, travellers and wildlife. Native London Plane trees grow between a more exotic Canary Island Palm and Australian Mimosa in this sheltered oasis.

7 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

Close to where Mount Street meets South Audley Street is the Mayfair Gallery. A treasure trove of furniture, lighting, paintings, sculpture and objets d’art, it was founded by Iranian born Mati Sinai who has dealt in antiques since the 70s. “Mayfair was and still is the premier location in London from which to exhibit and sell some of the pieces we have acquired over the years,” he says. “There is a peaceful serenity to the area.” His two sons Jamie and Daniel have joined the family business. “Once upon a time,” Mati says, “90 percent of our sales went to Japan and the US. Whilst we do still get customers from those regions, the growth of Russia, the Middle East and now China has radically changed our business.” A pair of vast vases commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I stand proudly in the shop front. The streets may not literally be paved with gold, but even on the outside of the red brick buildings are blue and white ceramic vases set in terracotta niches.

Mayfair has always attracted the rich and famous. Chesterfield Street alone boasts three blue plaques marking the homes of former Prime Minister Anthony Eden, playwright William Somerset Maugham and dandy Beau Brummell. The Queen was born in Mayfair, 17 Bruton Street to be precise. A Michelin starred Cantonese restaurant called Hakkasan is now at that address. Sketch on nearby Conduit Street is such a fusion of art, music and food that it is an installation itself. Art curator Clea Irving says, “Mayfair has a high concentration of artistically minded people – architects, artists, fashion designers, gallerists.” The fine dining restaurant at Sketch has two Michelin Stars.

4 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com

A property budget of £1 million will at best stretch to a studio flat in this “golden postcode”. Established over 30 years ago, Peter Wetherell’s eponymous estate agency is on Mount Street. “Wetherell recognises that people from around the world seek Mayfair’s finest properties,” he says.  A few doors down, 78 Mount Street has just been sold by Wetherell for £32 million. This corner mansion, originally built for Lord Windsor in 1896, has five reception rooms, nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms spread over six floors. An international influence is evident in its architecture, from French neoclassicism to Italian Renaissance and English Arts and Crafts. Two of Osbert Lancaster’s architectural idioms originate in Mayfair: “Curzon Street Baroque” and “Park Lane Residential”. Another two could easily be “International Eclecticism” and “Grosvenor Grandeur”.

3 Mount Street © Stuart Blakley lvbmag.com