Claridge’s, London home to kings and luxury

Claridge’s has a history and mystique that set it apart from the world’s finest hotels. You’ll think you are in heaven.

WISH TRAVEL 30 Oct 2015

There are several hotels in London that qualify for legend status: The Savoy, The Ritz, The Dorchester, Browns. But there is possibly no other hotel in London, or the world for that matter, that can quite match Claridge’s for character, history and mystique.

Plenty of London hotels have a roll call of famous guests, royal connections, luxurious rooms, great food and impeccable service. But there is an aura about Claridge’s that sets it apart from the rest. It has an illustrious heritage but it is not solely defined by its past. It’s not the only European hotel that can lay claim to playing a part in history, but few others have managed to be so consistently entwined with power and world affairs over the years. It’s part of Claridge’s magical quality that it has a storied history but is not a museum. It’s the hotel’s mix of modernity and heritage that allows it to welcome, simultaneously, the fabulously wealthy, the powerful, the fashionable, the famous and the everyday. As far as hotels go, Claridge’s, with its mix of aesthetics, quality, symbolism, history and, of course, price, is the very definition of modern luxury.

Spencer Tracy famously said, “When I die I don’t want to go to heaven … I want to go to Claridge’s.” It’s easy to see why he thought this place was so transcendent. Walking through the front revolving doors and up the three small steps to the main lobby is, according to Claridge’s artist-in-residence David Downton, a transformational experience. “You think, ‘What was I worrying about?’ There is something in the air here. There’s a new hotel opening all the time in London and money can buy you a lot when it comes to hotels. It can buy you a great renovation and some extra real estate, but it can’t buy history and it can’t buy the magic or the whisper in the wall.”

The whisper in the wall, as Downton puts it, is the intangible element that makes the hotel a trophy worth fighting over.

In April after a long and convoluted legal tussle, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, the twins who own the Ritz and The Telegraph, sold Claridge’s — along with The Berkeley and the Connaught — to Constellation Hotels, part of a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, which has been acquiring luxury hotels across Europe. (The price was not disclosed, but the Financial Times reported rumours of a rival £1.6bn offer from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for the three hotels — or £3m per room.) Constellation bought a 64 per cent stake of the Coroin group, an Irish investment company set up in the heady days before the global financial crisis. After the crunch, the debt underlying financier Derek Quinlan’s share of Coroin was sold to the Barclays, giving them a controlling interest. Coroin co-investor Patrick McKillen took them to court and lost; appealed and lost again; took them to court again this year. The Barclays tried to buy McKillen’s debts to gain complete control of Coroin, but were outbid by an American investment fund, Colony Capital, with close ties to Qatar. The Barclays’ exit has allowed McKillen to stay on to oversee the next chapter in Claridge’s history.

The first hotel on this site on Brook Street in Mayfair dates from 1812, when James Mivart opened a small boarding house called Mivart’s. In 1854, he sold the establishment to William and Marianne Claridge, who owned the adjoining houses that ran all the way to Davies Street. The hotel was then renamed “Claridge’s, late Mivart’s” and shortened to just Claridge’s after Mivart’s death in 1856 (a portrait of Marianne Claridge still hangs in the lobby). It didn’t take long for the hotel to acquire royal connections. In 1860, Empress Eugenie of France stayed at Claridge’s; she invited Queen Victoria and her husband Albert to visit her there and they accepted. From that moment, the hotel would be known as an extension to Buckingham Palace and a favourite place for heads of state and European royalty.

In 1881, with William in poor health, the Claridges sold the hotel to a consortium. At this time, London was going through a hotel boom, and the new establishments boasted electricity, elevators and ensuite bathrooms — Claridge’s quickly started to lose its appeal. Then in 1893, theatre impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, owner of The Savoy, bought the hotel. He promptly closed it down, demolished it and rebuilt it in its present guise. The hotel reopened in 1898 in a building designed by C.W. Stephens, who also designed the Harrods building in Knightsbridge. In the 1920s, the hotel’s interiors were updated to reflect the art deco fashion of the times and many of those features remain today. In that decade, two adjoining buildings were acquired and an extension built, providing 80 more rooms. In the 1950s, Hollywood started to make Claridge’s its London home and the hotel played host to Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Bing Crosby, Audrey Hepburn, Yul Brynner and many others. After its art deco transformation, the hotel had to wait until 1996 for another significant restoration, this time led by Thierry Despont.

There are many legendary stories associated with Claridge’s. It is said that, in the post-war period, when the phone rang at reception and someone asked to speak to the king, the standard response was “Which one?” (During World War II, the exiled kings of Greece, Norway, Holland and Yugoslavia all lived there.) When romance writer Barbara Cartland had tea at the hotel, her secretary would telephone in advance to let them know which of her two signature colours — pink or turquoise — she was wearing that day so they could lay her table in a matching tone. The Queen Mother had a favourite table in the restaurant that would always be dressed with sweet-peas, her favourite flower. Winston Churchill lived here in 1945 after his election defeat and even declared part of it, suite 212, Yugoslav territory so that Crown Prince Alexander II could effectively be born on Yugoslav soil.

In a Vanity Fair article on the fight over the ownership of Claridge’s, Tom Barrack of Colony Capital said, “No one really ever ‘owns’ these jewelled assets. We are all merely stewards for a short period of time with the mandate to leave them in better condition than we found them.” claridges.co.uk