Claridge's: Checking Into History

the British royal family what did they ever do for us except Hoover up money from the Civil List smirk at us from five-pound notes an attempt to flog us their organic ginger biscuits actually there is one thing that we can all be grateful to them for it's an elegant Hulk of a building in the middle of Mayfair and it only exists because George the fourth and his mates wanted somewhere to take their pickups without embarrassing themselves in front of their families and servants all grand hotels have grand guests that's why they exist but Claridge's has always catered for the really really grand this is where you come if you find the type so you run into at the Ritz a little to de classe and it's been here for nearly 200 years in 1813 when this hotel was founded royal scandals like Camilla gate and squidgy gate would never have happened Regency Britain's would have been faintly surprised to discover that the Prince of Wales didn't have a mistress the future George the fourth encouraged his friend James my Vaart to open some high-class lodgings and then made full use of them to have his royal way with anything that took his royal fancy it wasn't exactly a secret hideaway or a comfy set of apartments in which a person of blue blood might throw off his parry wig in gay abandon my vast place was modest domestic it had nothing so grand as this French salon all that came much later after the original buildings have been extended knocked through demolished rebuilt and renamed Claridge's the hotel on Brook Street has spent much of its last 190 odd years in a state of mutation the body of today's building dates from the final years of Queen Victoria's reign but the entrance hall is not deco at all Oswald Milne built a whole new extension to the hotel in the 1930s and Deco details abound at that time Claridge's already over a century old was so cool that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald gave it the thumbs up so did the England cricket team and Claridge's makeover has never stopped right in the middle of the Victorian foyer is this modern creation by Dale Chihuly this is 21st century gallery art Claridge's isn't talking its own heritage to impressionable slap jaws with fat wallets it's never been shy of getting in the decorators the restaurant used to look like this but now it's like this and the chef here couldn't be more flavour of the month and here's something that demonstrates the cyclical nature of taste the smoking-room is back a stylish way of segregating the addict's from the rest and it's so cozily upholstered that all thoughts of the cancer ward are banished from your mind but back at the beginning of the 19th century all this was to come were roll-your-own and big hotels haven't been invented they just didn't exist anywhere in the world if you were a britain away from home on a trip then it was the coaching in the boarding house or a night in Hyde Park sleeping under a copy of the times so James my vard the original proprietor was basically running an upmarket B&B too albeit one where the minimum stay was a month but he had a unique selling point my part had the advantage of being slap-bang in the middle of Mayfair as the frightening blue bit on the Monopoly board the location and his discretion must have brought him lots of satisfied customers because my Bart's began to expand building by building by 1853 he'd taken over four neighboring houses enough for a hotel as every monopoly player knows it's also enough to retire on and that's what my part did selling up to a couple named William and Mary Ann Claridge mr. Claridge loved royalty loved it he was the flunkies flunky he was a bit like Paul Burrell but without the book contract and all those frocks in the closet it was said that he varied the depth of his boughs according to the position of the recipient in the almanaque de Gotha so a Royal Highness would get a much more deep bow than a serene highness Claridge's customer service kept the building's full with such a pack of kings queens arch dukes and duchesses the hotel became known as the royal hostelry and the annex to Buckingham Palace a reputation it's never lost but by the time William Claridge bowed out in the 1890s the lack of lifts was causing customers to defect as was the absence of electricity and ensuite bathrooms compared to newcomers like the Savoy Claridge's old place seemed dowdy and outmoded its days seemed numbered the hotel was actually saved by its chief competitor it was bought by the Savoy owner Richard D'Oyly carte he kept the name but knocked down all the eighteenth-century houses building instead a lavish new structure which matched the expectation of fan de siècle aristos yet Claridge's stayed true to its roots as a boarding house the hotel wasn't just somewhere to Kip for a night or two most guests stayed much longer you'd think prices were too vulgar for the nobility to worry about but the ads kept drawing attention to them London's transient population of tofs were told it made economic sense to live at the hotel why bother keeping a townhouse that stayed shrouded in dust sheets for most of the year when you could book into Claridge's for a similar outlet according to this advertisement giving a dance at Claridge's involves no more expense than giving a dance in your own home there's an asterisk because holding the dance in your own home means the hiring of additional staff chairs plate china linen glasses etc purchase of flowers wear and tear of your own furniture and many other expenses quite apart from the caterers charges well that's me convinced first thing in the morning all those bags of nuts are going back to Waitrose [Music] Claridge's offered everything the self-respecting Aristo could need and unlike most hotels of its vintage it still does according to a brochure flowers play an important part in helping towards the gaiety and dignity of a party yes I wonder if you could help me out with a with a button the hole of course I can what can you recommend would you like a pink one that's good how long you stay in the hotel until they ring my bank oh thank you very much I feel very dignified my pleasure thank you of course there's a barber's shop offering all those little trims and scrapes previously carried out by your valet [Applause] [Music] and you can treat the luggage room like your own attic this is one of our luggage store rooms we've got space just like this on most floors of the hotel and every time one of our regular guests stays with us more often than not they will leave a lot of their belongings with us after they leave and we just keep it all in storage for them until their next visit it looks like so it's been here for a while you know it's not like the bag dump at Kings Cross yeah absolutely not there's there's a lot of our guests that literally come week after week month after month or wrigley on an annual basis so some of this stuff is been here for years then oh yeah we've got many guests that are quite literally stayed with us for generations and they will maintain a full wardrobe here at Claridge's when they leave the valet and the housekeeping team carefully itemized every item launder dry clean press everything and keep it in storage here until their next visit so they just leave the hotel with their handbag and leave all the big stuff here for next time the next time they come back they open the door and everything's laid out exactly as they left it so everything back in the wardrobes in the drawers and pressed and ready for the next trip the idea of living in a hotel is something that I think of as being one of the past but there must be still some people who almost treat Claridge's as though it's their home literally their second home like when they're in London carriages is there a dress [Music] Claridge's aristocratic guestlist was swelled during the Second World War as many of the crowned heads of Europe took refuge in London fleeing from the Nazis Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had her own curtain doff corner of the air-raid shelter the king of Greece stayed under the pseudonym of mr. brown and the second floor suite was home to the royal family of Yugoslavia the karageorge of each dynasty today's head of the family Crown Prince Alexander has resumed living in the royal palace in Belgrade but in 1944 his father and heavily pregnant mother were beginning their years of Exile at Claridge's Crown Prince Alexander was actually born in this hotel in order not to cause problems for the karageorge of each succession Churchill declared suite 212 to be part of Yugoslavia tree for the night and so it could truly be said that the prince was born upon Slavic soil a little bit of Earth from the mother country was sprinkled under the bed Queens is godmother you know at the end of the war when Churchill lost the general election to Clement Attlee he also lost his London home so Claridge's offered in one of their penthouses to stay Churchill must have stood here and gazed over the Blitz smashed skyline towards Parliament wondering at the ingratitude of the electorate but Winston was already familiar with the rooftop suites at Claridge's the movie mogul Alexander Korda regularly used one as his base during Churchill's 1930s wilderness years Corder employed him to write screenplays none ever went before a camera probably both new they never would but Churchill's name on the company's headed notepaper combined with the grandeur of a suite like this helped persuade investors to back quarters movies unfortunately most of them lost money but at least Korda could pay his hotel bill another pivotal moment in the history of British cinema occurred down in the depths of Claridge's in 1952 after a meeting at clarity's J off-the-rack the owner of Pinewood Studios was standing at these urinals with the Italian film producer Filippo del Giudice producer of in which we serve and Olivier's henry v del Giudice was a very enthusiastic sort of man and in the middle of making a very emphatic point turned round and we'd all over ranked shoes from then on the rank organisation was no longer willing to invest in del Giudice films a brilliant career in the bim film people may have occasionally been allowed to lower the tone at Claridge's but its core Cleon town remained Royals and heads of state in 1947 when the hotel put up many of the wedding guests of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip a booking and past courtier made the mistake of ringing up the hotel and asking to be put through to the king to which the telephony replied which King sir when a head of state beds down here in an official capacity their banners are hung outside the building for the funeral of George the sixth and in 1952 extra flag poles had to be stuck into the brickwork because at the hotel were three kings three queens ten princes and princesses and twelve Prime Minister's the tradition carries on today if it's an official visit will be told in advance from whichever Embassy whether or not there want to fly the flag of that particular country so does that mean that down in the basement somewhere there's the flag of every nation - or there's certainly a flag for most countries in the world [Music] [Applause] [Music] Claridge's cozy relationship with the palace has had one very important consequence when the monarch invites a visiting head of state for an official banquet they feel obliged to have a back to their place before they leave the UK and in most cases their place is Claridge's the return state banquet is usually a dinner though more cash-strapped countries can opt to invite Liz and Phil over for a bit of lunch heads of state being what they are not all of these figures have been particularly cuddly the Ceausescu's hosted a slap-up meal here 10 years before taking the bullet another government delegation was actually deposed while they were staying at Claridge's when they returned to their capital city they were all shot at the airport while the vips butter their rolls the real work goes on downstairs obviously there's always a few nerves on that night because the Queen or you know heads of state are here we do return state banquet so for example with Morocco and Saudi Arabia that you want us to try and recreate their food which is not always possible so what we have to do is look at what they do and analyze their food and then see what we're actually going to be able to do with it so we might have to westernize it a little bit we have to make sure that it meets our standards as well but every we've been very successful and I think it's kind of working with the people to keep everybody happy on both sides domestic royal occasions have also been hosted at Claridge's the Windsors must have read that brochure about saving the expense of entertaining at home the post coronation party was held at Claridge's so was the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh ruby wedding dinner and this was also where the big reception was held to mark the wedding of Charles and Diana it was quite a do the guests drank the house dry of Pol Roger champagne and here's the actual list of what they had on the night and in the fine tradition of preposterous Franglais menus the guests ate lucky joie de haddock and this is the guest list from the night the Royals are all in a separate list at the top down in the bottom of the first page is the monarch born in suite 212 Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia and there's another name which brings our story back to its starting point the origins of the hotel as a well upholstered pad for a spot of regal adultery among the commoners is a mrs. Parker Bowles if Claridge's is still a favorite venue for aristocratic indiscretion the hotel isn't saying of course it's not that would defeat the point entirely there hasn't been a return state banquet here for five years but that doesn't mean the minibars of Claridge's are no longer patronized by kings and queens it's just that regal ostentation is no longer in fashion how can it be when Royals get married in registry offices but that doesn't matter to Claridge's even though the Royal set that founded it now seems rather clueless and besieged the hotels still here and it has as much class as ever [Music]

Channel: Afterglow Television UK

Views: 208,615

Keywords: Claridge's, Claridges, art deco, Oswald Milne, Crown Prince Alexander, Alexander Korda, Winston Churchill

Id: cw4eqz0UzSk

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017