Tales of the famous from a famous hotel
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Published
18 March 2024
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Theodore Roosevelt, Mia Farrow, Stephen King, Haile Selassie, Agatha Christie and Rudyard Kipling. It’s hard to think of anything connecting such a disparate collection of people. But they do have at least one thing in common. All of them have stayed at Brown’s Hotel, in the heart of London’s affluent Mayfair.
The hotel is almost 200 years old, having been founded in 1832 by James and Sarah Brown, making it the city’s oldest luxury hotel. And, fittingly, for an institution with a story that stretches back almost two centuries, it now has its own history, written by the University of East London’s Head of Internal Communications and Engagement, Andy Williamson. His book, Brown’s Hotel: A Family Affair was published on 12 March.
It might sound like an unusual assignment, but Andy is an authority on historic hotels. He’s previously appeared on Channel 5 for a series of programmes about some of the world’s best-known, including Claridge’s, the Savoy, the Ritz and Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel.
So what made him want to write about Brown’s in particular? It was partially the opportunity to see familiar names in unfamiliar circumstances, he says,
It's a wonderful way to see a different side of these people, both the famous people, and the not so famous people. You see them in a very different light. History is people’s stories and a hotel is a stage on which stories take place. One of the great joys has been uncovering stories that weren’t known about. Brown’s is almost 200 years old, it's had royalty, presidents, writers, spies, businessmen, heroes and heroines, all staying there.”
Architecturally, Brown’s is one of London’s most unusual big hotels. Started by the Brown family in a single London townhouse, it’s spread over the years, taking over 12 more neighbouring townhouses. For Andy, that’s part of the charm. He says, “One of the pleasures of the hotel is that you would never, ever build it from scratch. It’s completely illogical. It’s a hotel that grew up by chance, by steady expansion, so you have corridors that are higgledy-piggledy, you have changes in levels, you have staircases with iron balustrade, where you imagine the nineteenth-century servants scuttling up and down.”
For most of its history, Brown’s has been run as a family affair, starting with the Browns themselves. It’s now owned by Rocco Forte Hotels, established by Sir Rocco Forte and his sister, Olga Polizzi. They’ve overseen a comprehensive renovation of the building, bringing a contemporary feel to an establishment that may once have had a reputation for being slightly dowdy.
That reputation has long gone, with the Forte family spending £24 million on the refurbishment. But it is the history that clings to Brown’s that most enchants Andy. And the hotel is full of it: it’s where Alexander Graham Bell made the very first phone call in Britain, where the Dutch government in exile declared war on Japan during World War Two, where Rudyard Kipling spent his honeymoon, where Stephen King wrote the outline of his novel Misery while sitting, according to legend, at Kipling’s desk.
But with the cheapest rooms costing around £840 a night, has Andy managed to sample any of the hotel’s famous hospitality? Luckily for him, writing the book did come with a few perks, he says, “I had a tough job doing my research, I had to stay the night, I had to eat in the restaurant, I had to go to the bar, I had to have afternoon tea. All tasks that I undertook with good grace! The room I stayed in, I discovered was bigger than my house. It was a suite, it had a living room, a bedroom, a dressing room, and a bathroom that was bigger than my living room at home.”
Andy Williamson’s Brown’s Hotel: A Family Affair can be bought on the Brown's hotel website.