Jaunt: Maybourne
From architectural majesty and design smarts to deftly curated art and game-changing cuisine, Maybourne’s six-piece hotel portfolio offers it all. With further expansion planned, the luxe hospitality experience is about to be redefined.
In horological circles, the Trinity — or ‘big three’ — refers to Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin. Ask a group of seasoned oily-rag-sniffers to settle on an equivalent triumvirate for luxury British-founded car marques, and you can expect a ‘wigs on the lawn’ scenario within minutes. Scotch whisky? On the strength of their top-end expressions, Glenfiddich, William Grant and the Glenlivet, for our money — although, again, debate among elite sippers would rage. And let’s not get into wine regions, for fear of inducing what the French call rester en travers de la gorge on an industrial scale.
Here’s another peach of a parlour game for connoisseurs of the finer things in life: what is the holy trinity of London hotels? For our money the big three was traditionally always Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley. We’ve never deemed it to be any coincidence that all three are owned by the same luxury hospitality operator: Maybourne, which was formed in 1998 by a group of Irish investors led by Derek Quinlan. And in light of recent additions to the group’s portfolio — the Beverly Hills outlet (which opened in 2019), the Maybourne Riviera (2022), and The Emory, the last of which turned our beloved London triumvirate into a quadrumvirate in summer last year — we’re happy to rubber-stamp Maybourne as the world’s most rakish group.
If one were to tell the Maybourne story focusing purely on business and ownership, the narrative would need to begin with the opening of a hospitality icon no longer in its milieu: The Savoy, which began welcoming guests in 1889. Theatrical impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte built the hotel to host attendees of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas at his nearby Savoy theatre. The hotel went on to become the Savoy Group of Hotels, which gradually drew Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley into its ecosphere. The resulting cluster, sans The Savoy (which was sold off separately), was acquired by Quinlan and his consortium for £750m.
But a story such as ours, focusing on the heritage and folklore behind the hotels in the Maybourne family, needs to begin in 1812, and the opening of what was then called Mivart’s Hotel. Located on Brook Street — we’re talking, of course, about the institution that would become Claridge’s — the hostelry quickly became popular with aristocrats and European dignitaries, many of whom were fleeing the tumultuous aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
Purchased in 1854 and renamed after its buyers, William and Marianne Claridge, the hotel’s continued status as a refuge for blue-blooded folk fleeing political unrest south of La Manche contributes much to its legend: Queen Victoria’s visit in the 1860s, to counsel the self-banished French Empress Eugénie, bolstered the hotel’s by-then already considerable prestige; to ensure Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia would be born on Yugoslav soil, in 1945 Winston Churchill — a regular visitor to the Foyer & Reading Room — declared suite 212 to be Yugoslav territory for a day, even having soil brought in from a kingdom then being dismembered by the Axis powers to be placed under the bed.
These days, factors such as the ongoing use of a manually controlled lift, the unveiling of the lobby’s Christmas trees (past designers have included Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry) and strong Hollywood associations — Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn were frequent guests in decades past, while Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Claridge’s is the only place in the world where you can have breakfast in bed with a duchess and a movie star” — all help turbo-charge the Claridge’s mythos.
“Claridge’s is the only place in the world where you can have breakfast in bed with a duchess and a movie star.”
