Get a total infusion of Englishness at The Beaumont, London – but of course with essential ingredients from other global hotspots.
The just-introduced gorgeous cigar cabinet (pictured at bottom), for a start, was designed and made in Milan. Hotel Managing Director Duncan Palmer had a space in the outer lobby – just after you enter from Balderton Street, in the heart of Mayfair.
He worked with bespoke furniture makers DeART, run by the two sons of Giovanni de Munari, who started the company in 1962. The result is a heavily-lacquered cabinet with a big display of Cuban cigars and eight private drawers, all, like the main display, humidity- and temperature-controlled. Pick of the puffs is the Cohiba Supremos 2014.
The Beaumont may be a somewhat under-the-radar private club for local residents but it is totally inclusive and welcomes passersby and staying visitors (the current tally of 72 rooms and suites will be complemented by an additional 30 units opening next year). The Magritte Bar is louche-but-not-louche venue for martinis and statement hats. Financial gurus are among regulars who come here to WFG, Work From Gatsby, an inner lounge that’s also chicest afternoon tea venue.
For main-meal dining, Colony Grill’s acoustics ensure neighbouring tables can’t hear your multi-million short-selling discussions. Sign the deal over 1983 Château Cheval Blanc, a Bordeaux from LVMH scion Bernard Arnault, or 1995 Opus One, the Napa beauty founded by the late and characterful Robert Mondavi.
The Beaumont offers a recipe of great names, led by its Chairman, Sir Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill. Add to that Who’s Who list versatile designer Sir Antony Gormley. For the Beaumont he came up with ROOM, a two-floor suite with, upstairs, a wood-lined space holding a bed. Nothing else.
As you glance up at The Beaumont from the street, you are aware instantly of ROOM’s exterior wrap, a Gormley silver-man sculpture, as building-block like as Angel of the North, his signature sculpture on hills high above Gateshead in northern England, is graceful.
The hotel’s superb literary evenings, real in the spiffing basement board room and, virtual, to culture-addicts worldwide, feature such erudite fascinators as investigative journalist Eliot Higgins, of Bellingcat, explaining how he identified the ‘Salisbury poisoners’. Coming up on Monday, 3rd October 2022, is In Our Time host, Baron Bragg (Melvyn Bragg, named after a Greta Garbo co-star). Pick him up, live, on the Tuesday morning over an early breakfast in Sydney or wherever.
Need-to-know names abound. The doorman directing you to Harrod’s, 20 minutes’ walk via Hyde Park Corner to Knightsbride, wears a titfer from hatters Lock & Co, Royal Warrant holders to HRH The Prince of Wales. Hotel boss Duncan Palmer drives to work here in his Bentley ‘We combine tradition with today’s world’ explains this quintessential model of a modern English hotelier.
Mary Gostelow publishes the daily girlahead.com and a unique weekly 15-minute industry Mary Gostelow Girlahead Podcast, both part of Almont Global.
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