Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
residence of the Duke of Westminster, the house is now the flagship store of
Alfred
Dunhill
. As well as a shop, Dunhill's has a bar, a barber's and a screening room where
they show classy masculine documentaries. On the first floor, they display a few items
from the days of Dunhill Motorities, gadget suppliers to Rolls Royce, whose slogan was
“everything but the motor”. This wonderful range made hip flasks disguised as books,
“Bobby Finders” for detecting police cars, in-car hookahs and even a motorist's pipe
with a windshield for open-top toking.
Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square
is the largest of Mayfair's squares. Its American connections go
back to 1785, when John Adams (future US President) established the first American
embassy in a house in the northeast corner. During World War II, it was known as
“Little America” - General Eisenhower, whose statue stands in the square, ran the
D-Day campaign from no. 20. As well as Eisenhower, there are statues of Roosevelt
and Reagan, and a memorial garden dedicated to the 67 British victims of 9/11. The
entire west side of the square is occupied by the monstrous, heavily guarded
US
Embassy
, built in 1960. The embassy is watched over by a giant gilded aluminium
eagle and has been the victim of numerous attacks over the decades. The first major
incident occurred in 1967 when Spanish anarchists machine-gunned the embassy in
protest against US collaboration with Franco. The most famous (and violent) protest
took place in 1968, when a demonstration against US involvement in Vietnam
turned into a riot. Mick Jagger, so the story goes, was innocently signing autographs
in his Bentley at the time, and later wrote
Street Fighting Man
, inspired by what he
witnessed. Most weeks, there's some group or other camped out objecting to US
foreign policy - in fact, American security concerns are such that in 2016, the
embassy will move to a purpose-built $1 billion complex near Vauxhall.
3
Claridge's
49 Brook St •
T
020 7629 8860,
W
claridges.co.uk •
!
Bond Street
Claridge's
started out in 1812 as
Mivart's Hotel
in a small terraced house, but has grown
considerably larger since those days. The current building dates from 1898, has over
two hundred rooms, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, and still attracts Hollywood and
pop glitterati from Brad Pitt to U2. Its royal connections are also second to none. Most
famously, King Peter II of Yugoslavia spent most of World War II in exile at the hotel
- suite 212 was ceded to Yugoslavia for a day on June 17, 1945 so that his son and heir,
Crown Prince Alexander, could be born on Yugoslav soil. A room in the hotel, painted
“whorehouse pink”, served as General Eisenhower's initial wartime pied-à-terre
,
and it
was also the wartime hangout of the OSS, forerunner of the CIA. It was here in 1943
that Szmul Zygielbojm, from the Polish government-in-exile, was told that Roosevelt
had refused his request to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz; the following day
he committed suicide.
Grosvenor Chapel
24 South Audley St • Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri 9am-1pm • Free •
T
020 7499 1684,
W
grosvenorchapel.org.uk •
!
Bond Street or
Green Park
American troops stationed in Britain used to worship at the
Grosvenor Chapel
,
two
blocks south of
Claridge's
on South Audley Street, a simple classical building that
formed the model for early settlers' churches in New England and is still popular with
the American community. The church's most illustrious corpse is radical MP John
Wilkes (“Wilkes and Liberty” was the battle cry of many a mid-eighteenth-century
riot). The interior comes as something of a surprise, however, as it was redesigned in
Anglo-Catholic style by Ninian Comper in 1912, and features an elaborate tableau of
gilded statuary: Christ crucified is flanked by Mary and one of the disciples, with two
angels kneeling below with chalices ready to catch the sacred blood.
