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[justforbooks]

The many lives of John le Carré, in his own words.

An exclusive extract from his new memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.

How I write

If you’re ever lucky enough to score an early success as a writer, as happened to me with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, for the rest of your life there’s a before-the-fall and an after-the-fall. You look back at the books you wrote before the searchlight picked you out and they read like the books of your innocence; and the books after it, in your low moments, like the strivings of a man on trial. ‘Trying too hard’ the critics cry. I never thought I was trying too hard. I reckoned I owed it to my success to get the best out of myself, and by and large, however good or bad the best was, that was what I did.

And I love writing. I love doing what I’m doing at this moment, scribbling away like a man in hiding at a poky desk on a black clouded early morning in May, with the mountain rain scuttling down the window and no excuse for tramping down to the railway station under an umbrella because the International New York Times doesn’t arrive until lunchtime.

I love writing on the hoof, in notebooks on walks, in trains and cafés, then scurrying home to pick over my booty. When I am in Hampstead there is a bench I favour on the Heath, tucked under a spreading tree and set apart from its companions, and that’s where I like to scribble. I have only ever written by hand. Arrogantly perhaps, I prefer to remain with the centuries-old tradition of unmechanized writing. The lapsed graphic artist in me actually enjoys drawing the words.

I love best the privacy of writing. On research trips, I am partially protected by having a different name in real life. I can sign into hotels without anxiously wondering whether my name will be recognised, then, when it isn’t, anxiously wondering why not. When I’m obliged to come clean with the people whose experience I want to tap, results vary. One person refuses to trust me another inch, the next promotes me to chief of the secret service and, over my protestations that I was only ever the lowest form of secret life, replies that I would say that, wouldn’t I? There are many things I am disinclined to write about ever, just as there are in anyone’s life. I have been neither a model husband nor a model father, and am not interested in appearing that way. Love came to me late, after many missteps. I owe my ethical education to my four sons. Of my work for British intelligence, performed mostly in Germany, I wish to add nothing to what is already reported by others, inaccurately, elsewhere. In this I am bound by vestiges of old-fashioned loyalty to my former services, but also by undertakings I gave to the men and women who agreed to collaborate with me. It was understood between us that the promise of confidentiality would be subject to no time limit, but extend to their children and beyond. The work we engaged in was neither perilous nor dramatic, but it involved painful soul-searching on the part of those who signed up to it. Whether today these people are alive or dead, the promise of confidentiality holds.

Spying was forced on me from birth much in the way, I suppose, that the sea was forced on CS Forester or India on Paul Scott. Out of the secret world I once knew, I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit. First comes the imagining, then the search for the reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I’m sitting now.

My Father: conman and inspiration

It took me a long while to get on writing terms with Ronnie, conman, fantasist, occasional jailbird, and my father. From the day I made my first faltering attempts at a novel, he was the one I wanted to get to grips with, but I was light years away from being up to the job. My earliest drafts of what eventually became A Perfect Spy dripped with self-pity: cast your eye, gentle reader, upon this emotionally crippled boy, crushed underfoot by his tyrannical father. It was only when he was safely dead and I took up the novel again that I did what I should have done at the beginning, and made the sins of the son a whole lot more reprehensible than the sins of the father.

With that settled, I was able to honour the legacy of his tempestuous life: a cast of characters to make the most blasé writer’s mouth water, from eminent legal brains of the day and stars of sport and screen to the finest of London’s criminal underworld and the beautiful creatures who trailed in their wake. Wherever Ronnie went, the unpredictable went with him. Are we up or down? Can we fill up the car on tick at the local garage? Has he fled the country or will he be proudly parking the Bentley in the drive tonight? Or is he enjoying the safety and comfort of one of his alternative wives?

Of Ronnie’s dealings with organised crime, if any, I know lamentably little. Yes, he rubbed shoulders with the notorious Kray twins, but that may just have been celebrity-hunting. And yes, he did business of a sort with London’s worst-ever landlord, Peter Rachman, and my best guess would be that when Rachman’s thugs had got rid of Ronnie’s tenants for him, he sold off the houses and gave Rachman a piece. But a full‑on criminal partnership? Not the Ronnie I knew. Conmen are aesthetes. They wear nice suits, have clean fingernails and are well spoken at all times. Policemen in Ronnie’s book were first-rate fellows who were open to negotiation. The same could not be said of “the boys”, as he called them, and you messed with the boys at your peril.

Ronnie’s entire life was spent walking on the thinnest, slipperiest layer of ice you can imagine. He saw no paradox between being on the wanted list for fraud and sporting a grey topper in the owners’ enclosure at Ascot. A reception at Claridge’s to celebrate his second marriage was interrupted while he persuaded two Scotland Yard detectives to put off arresting him until the party was over – and, meanwhile, come in and join the fun, which they duly did.  But I don’t think Ronnie could have lived any other way. I don’t think he wanted to. He was a crisis addict, a performance addict, a shameless pulpit orator and a scene-grabber. He was a delusional enchanter and a persuader who saw himself as God’s golden boy, and he wrecked a lot of people’s lives.

Graham Greene tells us that childhood is the credit balance of the writer. By that measure at least, I was born a millionaire.

Sixty-something years back, I asked my mother, Olive, how prison changed Ronnie. Olive was a tap you couldn’t turn off. From the moment of our reunion at Ipswich railway station, she talked about Ronnie nonstop. She talked about his sexuality long before I had sorted out mine, and for ease of reference gave me a tattered hardback copy of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis as a map to guide me through her husband’s appetites before and after jail.

“Changed, dear? In prison? Not a bit of it! You were totally unchanged. You’d lost weight, of course – well, you would. Prison food isn’t meant to be nice.” And then the image that will never leave me, not least because she seemed unaware of what she was saying: “And you did have this silly habit of stopping in front of doors and waiting at attention with your head down till I opened them for you. They were perfectly ordinary doors, not locked or anything, but you obviously weren’t expecting to be able to open them for yourself.” Why did Olive refer to Ronnie as you? You meaning he, but subconsciously recruiting me to be his surrogate, which by the time of her death was what I had become.

There is an audiotape that Olive made for my brother Tony, all about her life with Ronnie. I still can’t bear to play it, so all I’ve ever heard is scraps. On the tape she describes how Ronnie used to beat her up, which, according to Olive, was what prompted her to bolt. Ronnie’s violence was not news to me, because he had made a habit of beating up his second wife as well: so often and so purposefully and coming home at such odd hours of the night to do it that, seized by a chivalrous impulse, I appointed myself her ridiculous protector, sleeping on a mattress in front of her bedroom door and clutching a golf iron so that Ronnie would have to reckon with me before he got at her.

Ronnie beat me up, too, but only a few times and not with much conviction. It was the shaping up that was the scary part: the lowering and readying of the shoulders, the resetting of the jaw. And when I was grown up, Ronnie tried to sue me, which I suppose is violence in disguise. He had watched a television documentary of my life and decided there was an implicit slander in my failure to mention that I owed everything to him.

For the last third of Ronnie’s life – he died suddenly at the age of 69 – we were estranged or at loggerheads. Almost by mutual consent, there were terrible obligatory scenes, and when we buried the hatchet, we always remembered where we’d put it. Do I feel more kindly towards him today than I did then? Sometimes I walk round him, sometimes he’s the mountain I still have to climb. Either way, he’s always there, which I can’t say for my mother, because to this day I have no idea what sort of person she was. I ran her to earth when I was 21, and thereafter broadly attended to her needs, not always with good grace. But from the day of our reunion until she died, the frozen child in me showed not the smallest sign of thawing out. Did she love animals? Landscape? The sea that she lived beside? Music? Painting? Me? Did she read books? Certainly she had no high opinion of mine, but what about other people’s?

In the nursing home where she stayed during her last years, we spent much of our time deploring or laughing at my father’s misdeeds. As my visits continued, I came to realise that she had created for herself – and for me – an idyllic mother–son relationship that had flowed uninterrupted from my birth till now.

Today, I don’t remember feeling any affection in childhood except for my elder brother, who for a time was my only parent. I remember a constant tension in myself that even in great age has not relaxed. I remember little of being very young. I remember the dissembling as we grew up, and the need to cobble together an identity for myself and how, in order to do this, I filched from the manners and lifestyle of my peers and betters, even to the extent of pretending I had a settled home life with real parents and ponies. Listening to myself today, watching myself when I have to, I can still detect traces of the lost originals, chief among them obviously my father.

All this no doubt made me an ideal recruit to the secret flag. But nothing lasted: not the Eton schoolmaster, not the MI5 man, not the MI6 man. Only the writer in me stuck the course. If I look over my life from here, I see it as a succession of engagements and escapes, and I thank goodness that the writing kept me relatively straight and largely sane. My father’s refusal to accept the simplest truth about himself set me on a path of enquiry from which I never returned. In the absence of a mother or sisters, I learned women late, if ever, and we all paid a price for that.

A trip to Panama

In 1885, France’s gargantuan efforts to build a sea-level canal across the Darien ended in disaster. Small and large investors of every stamp were ruined. In consequence there arose across the country the pained cry of “Quel Panama!” Whether the expression has endured in the French language is doubtful, but it speaks well for my own association with that beautiful country, which began in 1947 when my father, Ronnie, dispatched me to Paris to collect £500 from the Panamanian ambassador to France, one Count Mario da Bernaschina, who occupied a sweet house in one of those elegant side roads off the Elysées that smell permanently of women’s scent.

It was evening when I arrived by appointment on the ambassadorial doorstep wearing my grey school suit, my hair brushed and parted. I was 16 years old. The ambassador, my father had advised me, was a first-class fellow and would be happy to settle a longstanding debt of honour. I wanted very much to believe him.

The front door to the elegant house was opened by the most desirable woman I had ever seen. I must have been standing one step beneath her, because in my memory she is smiling down on me like my angel redeemer. She was bare-shouldered, black-haired and wore a flimsy dress in layer after layer of chiffon that failed to disguise her shape. When you are 16, desirable women come in all ages. From today’s vantage point, I would put her at a blossoming thirtysomething.

“You are Ronnie’s son?” she asked incredulously. She stood back to let me brush past her. Laying a hand on each of my shoulders, she scrutinised me playfully from head to toe under the hall light and seemed to find everything to her satisfaction.

“And you have come to see Mario?” she said.

If that’s all right, I said.

Her hands remained on my shoulders while her eyes of many colours continued to study me. “And you are still a boy,” she remarked, as a kind of memo to herself.

The count stood in his drawing room with his back to the fireplace, like every ambassador in every movie of the time: corpulent, in a velvet jacket, hands behind him and that perfect head of greying hair they all had – marcelled, we used to call it – and the curved handshake, man to man, although I’m still a boy. The countess – for so I have cast her – doesn’t ask me whether I drink alcohol, let alone whether I like daiquiri. My answer to both questions would anyway have been a truthless “yes”. She hands me a frosted glass with a speared cherry in it, and we all sit down in soft chairs and do a bit of ambassadorial small talk. Am I enjoying the city? Do I have many friends in Paris? A girlfriend, perhaps? Mischievous wink. To which I no doubt give compelling and mendacious answers that make no mention of golf clubs or concierges, until a pause in the conversation tells me it’s time for me to broach the purpose of my visit which, as experience has already taught me, is best done from the side rather than head on.

“And my father mentioned that you and he had a small matter of business to complete, sir,” I suggest, hearing myself from a distance on account of the daiquiri.

I should here explain the nature of that small matter of business which, unlike so many of Ronnie’s deals, was simplicity itself. As a diplomat and a top ambassador, son – I am echoing the enthusiasm with which Ronnie had briefed me for my mission – the count was immune from such tedious irritations as taxation and import duty. The count could import what he wished, he could export what he wished. If someone, for instance, chose to send the count a cask of unmatured, unbranded Scotch whisky at a couple of pence a pint under diplomatic immunity, and the count were to bottle that whisky and ship it to Panama, or wherever else he chose to ship it under diplomatic immunity, that was nobody’s business but his.

Equally, if the count chose to export the said unmatured, unbranded whisky in bottles of a certain design – akin, let us imagine, to Dimple Haig, a popular brand of the day – that, too, was his good right, as was the choice of label and the description of the bottle’s contents. All that need concern me was that the count should pay up – cash, son, no monkey business. Thus provided, I should treat myself to a nice mixed grill at Ronnie’s expense, keep the receipt, catch the first ferry next morning and come straight to his grand offices in the West End of London with the balance.

“A matter of business, David?” the count repeated in the tone of my school housemaster. “What business can that be?”

“The £500 you owe him, sir.”

I remember his puzzled smile, so forbearing. I remember the richly draped sofas and silky cushions, old mirrors and gold glint, and my countess with her long legs crossed inside the layers of chiffon. The count continued to survey me with a mixture of puzzlement and concern. So did my countess. Then they surveyed each other as if to compare notes about what they’d surveyed.

“Well, that’s a pity, David. Because when I heard you were coming to see me, I rather hoped you might be bringing me a portion of the large sum of money I have invested in your dear father’s enterprises.”

I still don’t know how I responded to this startling reply, or whether I was as startled as I should have been. I remember briefly losing my sense of time and place, and I suppose this was partly induced by the daiquiri, and partly by the recognition that I had nothing to say and no right to be sitting in their drawing room, and that the best thing I could do was make my excuses and get out. Then I realised that I was alone in the room. After a while, my host and hostess returned.

The count’s smile was genial and relaxed. The countess looked particularly pleased. “So, David,” said the count, as if all were forgiven. “Why don’t we go and have dinner and talk about something more pleasant?”

They had a favourite Russian restaurant 50 yards from the house. In my memory, it is a tiny place and we are the only three people in it, save for a man in a baggy white shirt who plucked at a balalaika. Over dinner, while the count talked about something more pleasant, the countess kicked off a shoe and caressed my leg with her stockinged toe. On the tiny dance floor she sang Dark Eyes to me, holding the length of me against her and nibbling my earlobe while she flirted with the balalaika man and the count looked indulgently on. On our return to the table, the count decided that we were ready for bed. The countess, by a squeeze of my hand, seconded the motion.

My memory has spared me the excuses I made, but somehow I made them. Somehow I found myself a bench in a park, and somehow I contrived to remain the boy she had declared me to be. Decades later, finding myself alone in Paris, I tried to seek out the very street, the house, the restaurant. But by then no reality would have done them justice.

Now I am not pretending that it was the magnetic force of the count and countess that half a century later drew me to Panama for the space of two novels and one movie; merely that the recollection of that sensuous, unfulfilled night remained lodged in my memory, if only as one of the near-misses of interminable adolescence. Within days of my arrival in Panama City, I was enquiring after the name. Bernaschina? Nobody had heard of the fellow. A count? From Panama? It seemed most improbable. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing? I hadn’t.

I had come to Panama to research a novel. Unusually, it already had a title: The Night Manager. I was looking for the sort of crooks, smooth talkers and dirty deals that would brighten the life of an amoral English arms seller named Richard Onslow Roper. Roper would be a high-flyer where my father, Ronnie, had been a low one who frequently crashed. Ronnie had tried selling arms in Indonesia and gone to jail for it. Roper was too big to fail, until he met his destiny in the shape of a former special forces soldier turned hotel night manager named Jonathan Pine.

Working with Sir Alec Guinness

“We are definitely not as our host here describes us,” says Sir Maurice Oldfield severely to Sir Alec Guinness over lunch. Oldfield is a former chief of the secret service who was later hung out to dry by Margaret Thatcher, but at the time of our meeting, he is just another old spy in retirement. “I’ve always wanted to meet Sir Alec,” he told me in his homey, north country voice when I invited him. “Ever since I sat opposite him on the train going up from Winchester. I’d have got into conversation with him if I’d had the nerve.”

Guinness is about to play my secret agent George Smiley in the BBC’s television adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and wishes to savour the company of a real old spy. But the lunch does not proceed as smoothly as I had hoped. Over the hors d’oeuvres, Oldfield extols the ethical standards of his old service and implies, in the nicest way, that “young David here” has besmirched its good name.

Guinness, a former naval officer, who from the moment of meeting Oldfield has appointed himself to the upper echelons of the secret service, can only shake his head sagely and agree. Over the Dover sole, Oldfield takes his thesis a step further: “It’s young David and his like,” he declares across the table to Guinness while ignoring me sitting beside him, “that make it that much harder for the service to recruit decent officers and sources. They read his books and they’re put off. It’s only natural.” To which Guinness lowers his eyelids and shakes his head in a deploring sort of way, while I pay the bill.

“You should join the Athenaeum, David,” Oldfield says kindly, implying that the Athenaeum will somehow make a better person of me. “I’ll sponsor you myself. There. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” And to Guinness, as the three of us stand on the threshold of the restaurant: “A pleasure indeed, Alec. An honour, I must say. We shall be in touch very shortly, I’m sure.”

“We shall indeed,” Guinness replies devoutly, as the two old spies shake hands.

Unable apparently to get enough of our departing guest, Guinness gazes fondly after him as he pounds off down the pavement: a small, vigorous gentleman of purpose, striding along with his umbrella thrust ahead of him as he disappears into the crowd. “How about another cognac for the road?” Guinness suggests, and we have hardly resumed our places before the interrogation begins: “Those very vulgar cufflinks. Do all our spies wear them?” No, Alec, I think Maurice just likes vulgar cufflinks.

“And those loud orange suede boots with crepe soles. Are they for stealth?” I think they’re just for comfort actually, Alec. Crepe squeaks. “Then tell me this.” He has grabbed an empty tumbler. Tipping it to an angle, he flicks at it with his thick fingertip. “I’ve seen people do this before” – making a show of peering meditatively into the tumbler while he continues to flick it – “and I’ve seen people do this” – now rotating the finger round the rim in the same contemplative vein.

“But I’ve never seen people do this before” – inserting his finger into the tumbler and passing it round the inside. “Do you think he’s looking for dregs of poison?”

Is he being serious? The child in Guinness has never been more serious in its life. Well, I suppose if it was dregs he was looking for, he’d have drunk the poison by then, I suggest. But he prefers to ignore me.

It is a matter of entertainment history that Oldfield’s suede boots, crepe-soled or other, and his rolled umbrella thrust forward to feel out the path ahead, became essential properties for Guinness’s portrayal of George Smiley, old spy in a hurry. I haven’t checked on the cufflinks recently, but I have a memory that our director thought them a little overdone and persuaded Guinness to trade them in for something less flashy.

The other legacy of our lunch was less enjoyable, if artistically more creative. Oldfield’s distaste for my work – and, I suspect, for myself – struck deep root in Guinness’s thespian soul, and he was not above reminding me of it when he felt the need to rack up George Smiley’s sense of personal guilt; or, as he liked to imply, mine.

Lunch with Rupert Murdoch

One morning in the autumn of 1991, I opened my Times newspaper to be greeted by my own face glowering up at me. From my sour expression, I could tell at once that the text around it wasn’t going to be friendly. A struggling Warsaw theatre, I read, was celebrating its post-communist freedom by putting on a stage version of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. But the rapacious le Carré [see photograph] wanted a whacking £150 per performance: “The price of freedom, we suppose.”

I took another look at the photograph and saw exactly the sort of fellow who does indeed go round preying on struggling Polish theatres. Grasping. Unsavoury appetites. Just look at those eyebrows. I had by now ceased to enjoy my breakfast. Keep calm and call your agent. I fail on the first count, succeed on the second. My literary agent’s name is Rainer. In what the novelists call a quavering voice, I read the article aloud to him. Has he, I suggest delicately – might he possibly, just this once, is it at all conceivable? – on this occasion been a tad too zealous on my behalf? Rainer is emphatic. Quite the reverse. Since the Poles are still in the recovery ward after the collapse of communism, he has been a total pussycat. We are not charging the theatre £150 per performance, he assures me, but a measly £26, the minimum standard rate. In addition to which, we’ve thrown in the rights for free. In short, a sweetheart deal, David, a deliberate helping hand to a Polish theatre in time of need. Great, I say, bewildered and inwardly seething.

Keep calm and fax the editor of the Times. His response is lofty. Not to put too fine an edge on it, it is infuriating. He sees no great harm in the piece, he says. He suggests that a man in my fortunate position should take the rough with the smooth. This is not advice I am prepared to accept. But who to turn to?

Why, of course: the man who owns the newspaper, Rupert Murdoch, my old buddy!

Well, not exactly buddy. I had met Murdoch socially on a couple of occasions, though I doubted whether he remembered them. I have three conditions, I say: number one, a generous apology prominently printed in the Times; number two, a handsome donation to the struggling Polish theatre. And number three, lunch. Next morning his reply was lying on the floor beneath my fax machine: “Your terms accepted. Rupert.”

The Savoy Grill in those days had a kind of upper level for moguls: red-plush, horseshoe-shaped affairs where in more colourful days gentlemen of money might have entertained their ladies. I breathe the name Murdoch to the maître d’hôtel and am shown to one of the privés. I am early. Murdoch is bang on time. He is smaller than I remember him, but more pugnacious, and has acquired that hasty waddle and little buck of the pelvis with which great men of affairs advance on one another, hand outstretched, for the cameras. The slant of the head in relation to the body is more pronounced than I remember, and when he wrinkles up his eyes to give me his sunny smile, I have the odd feeling he’s taking aim at me. We sit down, we face each other. I notice – how can I not? – the unsettling collection of rings on his left hand. We order our food and exchange a couple of banalities. Rupert says he’s sorry about that stuff they wrote about me. Brits, he says, are great penmen, but they don’t always get things right. I say, not at all, and thanks for your sporting response. But enough of small talk. He is staring straight at me and the sunny smile has vanished.

“Who killed Bob Maxwell?” he demands.

Robert Maxwell, for those lucky enough not to remember him, was a Czech-born media baron, British parliamentarian and the alleged spy of several nations, including Israel, the Soviet Union and Britain. As a young Czech freedom fighter, he had taken part in the Normandy landings and later earned himself a British army commission and a gallantry medal. After the war, he worked for the Foreign Office in Berlin. He was also a flamboyant liar and rogue of gargantuan proportions and appetites who plundered the pension fund of his own companies to the tune of £440m, owed around £4bn that he had no way of repaying and in November 1991 was found dead in the seas off Tenerife, having apparently fallen from the deck of a lavish private yacht named after his daughter. Conspiracy theories abounded. To some, it was a clear case of suicide by a man ensnared by his own crimes; to others, murder by one of the several intelligence agencies he had supposedly worked for. But which one? Why Murdoch should imagine I know the  answer to this question is beyond me, but I do my best to give satisfaction. Well, Rupert, if we’re really saying it’s not suicide, then probably, for my money, it was the Israelis, I suggest.

“Why?”

I’ve read the rumours that are flying around, as we all have. I regurgitate them: Maxwell, the long-term agent of Israeli intelligence, blackmailing his former paymasters; Maxwell, who had traded with the Shining Path in Peru, offering Israeli weapons in exchange for strategic cobalt; Maxwell, threatening to go public unless the Israelis paid up. But Rupert Murdoch is already on his feet, shaking my hand and saying it was great to meet me again. And maybe he’s as embarrassed as I am, or just bored, because already he’s powering his way out of the room, and great men don’t sign bills, they leave them to their people. Estimated duration of lunch: 25 minutes.

A meeting with Margaret Thatcher

The prime minister’s office wished to recommend me for a medal, and I had declined. I had not voted for her, but that fact had nothing to do with my decision. I felt, as I feel today, that I was not cut out for our honours system, that it represents much of what I most dislike about our country. In my letter of reply, I took care to assure the prime minister’s office that my churlishness did not spring from any personal or political animosity, offered my thanks and compliments to the prime minister, and assumed I would hear no more.

I was wrong. In a second letter, her office struck a more intimate note. Lest I was regretting a decision taken in heat, the writer wished me to know that the door to an honour was still open. I replied, equally courteously I hope, that as far as I was concerned the door was firmly shut, and would remain so in any similar contingency. Again, my thanks. Again, my compliments to the prime minister. And again I assumed the matter was closed, until a third letter arrived, inviting me to lunch. There were six tables set in the dining room of 10 Downing Street that day, but I only remember ours, which had Mrs Thatcher at its head and the Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers on her  right, and myself in a tight new grey suit on her left. The year must have been 1982. I was just back from the Middle East, Lubbers had just been appointed. Our other three guests remain a pink blob to me. I assumed, for reasons that today escape me, that they were industrialists from the north. Neither do I remember any opening exchanges between the six of us, but perhaps they had happened over cocktails before we sat down. But I do remember Mrs Thatcher turning to the Dutch prime minister and acquainting him with my distinction. “Now, Mr Lubbers,” she announced in a tone to prepare him for a nice surprise, “this is Mr Cornwell, but you will know him better as the writer John le Carré.”

Leaning forward, Mr Lubbers took a close look at me. He had a youthful face, almost a playful one. He smiled, I smiled: really friendly smiles. “No,” he said. And sat back in his chair, still smiling. But Mrs Thatcher, it is well known, did not lightly take no for an answer.

“Oh, come, Mr Lubbers. You’ve heard of John le Carré. He wrote The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and…” – fumbling slightly – “… other wonderful books.”

Lubbers, nothing if not a politician, reconsidered his position. Again he leaned forward and took another, longer look at me, as amiable as the first, but more considered, more statesmanlike.

“No,” he repeated.

Now it was Mrs Thatcher’s turn to take a long look at me, and I underwent something of what her all-male cabinet must have experienced when they, too, incurred her displeasure. “Well, Mr Cornwell,” she said, as to an errant schoolboy who had been brought to account, “since you’re here” – implying that I had somehow talked my way in – “have  you anything you wish to say to me?”

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I had indeed something to say to her, if badly. Having recently returned from South Lebanon, I felt obliged to plead the cause of stateless Palestinians. Lubbers listened. The gentlemen from the industrial north listened. But Mrs Thatcher listened more attentively than all of them, and with no sign of the impatience of which she was frequently accused. Even when I had stumbled to the end of my aria, she went on listening before delivering herself of her response. “Don’t give me sob stories,” she ordered me with sudden vehemence, striking the key words for emphasis. “Every day people appeal to my emotions. You can’t govern that way. It simply isn’t fair.”

Whereupon, appealing to my emotions, she reminded me that it was the Palestinians who had trained the IRA bombers who had murdered her friend Airey Neave, the British war hero and politician, and her close adviser. After that, I don’t believe we spoke to each other much. Occasionally I do ask myself whether Mrs Thatcher nevertheless had an ulterior motive in inviting me. Was she, for instance, sizing me up for one of her quangos – those strange quasi-official public bodies that have authority but no power, or is it the other way round? But I found it hard to imagine what possible use she could have for me – unless, of course, she wanted guidance from the horse’s mouth on how to sort out her squabbling spies.

• This is an edited extract from The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life, by John le Carré, published next week by Viking at £20. Order a copy for £15 from the Guardian bookshop.

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@madamhatter​ said:  🍻 our muses enjoy a bit too much spiked apple cider during a party and find themselves in the guest bedroom hotel room because it makes more sense (send cheers if you can’t see the emoji) / oh boy

Autumn Starters

She could forget about getting up: just opening her eyes made Sonia Nevermind’s head throb. She’d been asleep, that much she knew, but her bedsheets were very much unlike the ones from her room in Oxford. And outside, the usual bustle of students on their way to the dining hall or class was completely absent. The Princess of Novoselic groaned, a fist gripping the blanket over her waist. It had slid off her to the right, an odd predicament as she usually cocooned herself in her blankets with a pillow in her arms. There was only one conclusion: this definitely wasn’t her bed, which meant, after the party in London, she hadn’t gotten the car to take her back to university.

“What time is it...” She muttered, stifling a yawn and holding the pillow closer. She didn’t expect an answer, but beside her, the mattress shifted. Shifted, in such a way that only another body could cause the springs beneath her, beneath...them, to creak.

Sonia was wide awake now.

Throwing the pillow aside, where it bounced off the nearby chair and fell onto the rug, she sat straight up in bed, tired blue eyes snapping open to survey her current situation. A hotel room, one that reminded her of Claridge’s. An unfamiliar chill. Bright sunlight. And...a lump in the bed beside her, definitely human sized. Sonia’s face turned pale, twisted into shock: why, exactly, was someone sharing her bed? And most importantly, who was it? She’d had quite a bit of cider last night during the party at Whitechapel, where a renovated warehouse had been turned into a vibrant party for the Oxbridge set, eager to take a weekend off from campus. But she couldn’t have had that much, could she?

The answer was, as usual: Yes.

With a shaking hand, she reached out to pull back the covers enough to see the person’s face. God, she could only hope that it wasn’t someone from her own dormitory hall. Or any of the various minor royals and aristocrats who’d attended: even if she was simply sleeping beside someone, it would be a difficult task of diplomacy to smooth things over. What if she hadn’t had the pillow all night? What if she’d hugged them in her sleep? It was her habit, one she’d tried to break and was terribly embarrassing. Having to divulge it to the wrong person would create a flurry of press she was in no mood to deal with, alongside a hangover and panicked Novoselic Royal Council.

But as she inched the cover down, she was met with a familiar shade of brown hair. A familiar scent of soap. It was the sort Sophie wore, because she saw no need for perfume. Not if she was working in the atelier or in the kitchen, she’d say, whenever Sonia suggested they seek new scents for one another. Each time, Sonia had pouted and had stuck with her rose, jasmine, and orange blossom scent she most commonly applied.

The person looked like Sophie, and smelled like Sophie, because as she rolled over, Sonia was greeted with the undeniable fact that Sophie Hatter lay in bed beside her.

And that was enough to make Sonia shriek in surprise, in alarm, and because she looked down to find that she’d discarded her party dress at some point between that morning and when she’d left the party and was left to sleep only in her mesh and lace bra and underwear, with her lace-topped thigh high stockings, that left very little to the imagination. It had made her dress fall beautifully of course, but the strategically placed black lace flowers and elegant patterns, while delicate, were not the image of modesty. God, if Sophie really looked at her, she’d get a good eyeful of her breasts and her far more intimate area below.

Sonia screamed again, this time pulling the bedsheets up and over her chest, holding them there with a firm hand. It wasn’t as if Sophie hadn’t seen her in her underwear before: she’d witnessed Sonia in her bra and knickers plenty of time for clothing fittings. But in those situations, Sonia always made sure she wore full coverage, opaque undergarments. Nothing quite so salacious and seductive, her preference in lingerie was a secret to all except Sonia.

“Sophie!” Sonia half-hissed, half-cried, “What are you doing here? How did we leave the party? Didn’t we both have separate rooms? Why are we sharing a bed? WHEN DID I TAKE MY DRESS OFF!?”

She’d wanted to bring Sophie along to show off her latest creation, to have her school acquaintances meet the designer, and most importantly, give Sophie a night off to attend a party, sleep in a hotel, and indulge in one of the best afternoon teas in London. But now it seemed their holiday would be anything but relaxing.

[orbemnews]

Goldman Sachs Will Ask Most Workers to Return in June: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York.Credit…Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Goldman Sachs plans to ask most workers based in the United States and United Kingdom offices to return to the office in June, according to a person familiar with the matter, making it one of the first big banks to request an end to remote working. In a memo expected to be sent to bank employees on Tuesday, Goldman officials will ask that workers “prepare” to return to the office during the second half of June, the person said. The memo will target employees who are based in the firm’s New York headquarters as well as other U.S. cities, including San Francisco and Dallas, and those in London, the person added. Most employees at the big banks have been working from home since the pandemic began last year, but Goldman’s plans signal that some executives are eager to attempt a return to office life. JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, plans to open all its U.S. offices on May 17 for employees who wish to return voluntarily. That will be followed by a compulsory return in July, when workers will rotate in and out of the office in accordance with safety measures that will limit each office’s capacity. Bank of America has not yet announced to employees when a fuller return to the office is expected. Twitter has begun to add paid subscriptions, and announced plans to introduce other subscriber features in the future.Credit…Laura Morton for The New York Times Twitter plans to acquire the subscription service Scroll, the social media company announced on Tuesday, as it expands its plans for subscription offerings. The two companies declined to disclose the deal terms. Scroll charges its users a fee to block advertising on participating news websites, then distributes a cut of its earnings to its partner publishers, which include USA Today, Vox and The Atlantic. Publishers can earn up to 50 percent more from the service than they do from advertising, Scroll contends. Twitter plans to integrate the service into its platform, and use its technology to build other subscription services. “People come to Twitter every day to discover and read about what’s happening,” Mike Park, Twitter’s vice president for product, said in a blog post announcing the deal. “If Twitter is where so much of this conversation lives, it should be easier and simpler to read the content that drives it.” In recent months, Twitter has begun to add paid subscriptions, and announced plans to introduce other subscriber features in the future. In January, Twitter acquired Revue, a newsletter provider, and said it would take a 5 percent cut of subscription revenue. In February, the company revealed plans to introduce “Super Follows,” a feature that would allow Twitter users to place some of their content behind a pay wall. And this week, Twitter said it planned to add a ticketing feature to its audio chat, Spaces, so that hosts can charge listeners for entry into their discussions. Twitter plans to supplement its advertising revenue with revenue from subscriptions, and has raced to add content like newsletters and audio chats that it thinks audiences will pay for. Its acquisition of Scroll will add journalism to that list. “For every other platform, journalism is dispensable. If journalism were to disappear tomorrow their business would carry on much as before,” Tony Haile, Scroll’s chief executive, wrote in a blog post. “Twitter is the only large platform whose success is deeply intertwined with a sustainable journalism ecosystem.” Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, said that the company wanted to build “a phenomenon that transcends gaming.”Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times The chief executive of Epic Games offered a granular explanation of the popular game Fortnite to paint an expansive portrait of his company’s world on the first day of what is expected to be a three-week trial, pitting Epic against Apple in a fight over Apple’s App Store fees and other rules that could reshape the $100 billion app economy. Fortnite, Tim Sweeney said, “is a phenomenon that transcends gaming,” Erin Griffith reports for The New York Times. “Our aim of Fortnite is to build something like a metaverse from science fiction,” he said. Metaverse? A court reporter needed clarification. It’s a virtual world for socializing and entertainment, Mr. Sweeney said. In a mostly empty courtroom in Oakland, Katherine Forrest of the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore opened Epic’s case by previewing a series of emails between Apple’s top executives. The emails were evidence, Ms. Forrest argued, that the tech giant purposely created a “walled garden” that locks consumers and developers inside. That forces them to use Apple’s payment system, she said. Once Apple lured users and developers into its walled garden, “the garden gate was closed, the lock turned,” Ms. Forrest said. She compared Apple’s fees on in-app purchases for subscription services to a car dealership that takes a commission on gas sales. Apple’s lawyers described, in their opening statement, a thriving market for app distribution that includes gaming consoles, desktop computer gaming and the mobile web. Karen Dunn of Paul, Weiss argued that the 30 percent commission was in line with industry standards and that Epic’s requests, if granted, would make iPhones less secure, while unlawfully forcing Apple to do business with a competitor. Ms. Dunn added that Epic’s case was a self-serving way to avoid paying fees it owed Apple and was on shaky legal footing. Pfizer’s vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world’s rich.Credit…Dado Ruvic/Reuters On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that its Covid vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of its total revenue. The vaccine was, far and away, Pfizer’s biggest source of revenue, report Rebecca Robbins and Peter S. Goodman of The New York Times. The company did not disclose the profits it derived from the vaccine, but it reiterated its previous prediction that its profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. That would translate into roughly $900 million in pretax vaccine profits in the first quarter. Pfizer has been widely credited with developing an unproven technology that has saved an untold number of lives. But the company’s vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world’s rich — an outcome, so far at least, at odds with its chief executive’s pledge to ensure that poorer countries “have the same access as the rest of the world” to a vaccine that is highly effective at preventing Covid-19. As of mid-April, wealthy countries had secured more than 87 percent of the more than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent, according to the World Health Organization. In wealthy countries, roughly one in four people has received a vaccine. In poor countries, the figure is one in 500. Throughout the pandemic, Eleven Madison Park has been preparing food boxes for needy families. The new plant-based iteration of the restaurant will help sustain efforts like those, said its chef, Daniel Humm.Credit…Lucas Jackson/Reuters Eleven Madison Park, the Manhattan restaurant that has been called the best in the world, will serve an all-plant-based menu when it reopens after more than a year of being closed because of the pandemic. Eleven Madison Park’s multicourse menu will keep its prepandemic price of $335, including tip, Brett Anderson and Jenny Gross report for The New York Times. Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park’s chef, said the decision is the result of a yearslong re-evaluation about where his career was headed, which reached its breaking point during the pandemic. “It became very clear to me that our idea of what luxury is had to change,” Mr. Humm said. “We couldn’t go back to doing what we did before.” While the restaurant’s ingredient costs will go down, labor costs will go up as Mr. Humm and his chefs work to make vegan food live up to Eleven Madison Park’s reputation. “It’s a labor intensive and time consuming process,” he said. It marks a striking departure for one of the most lavishly praised American restaurants of the past 20 years. Though Mr. Humm still offers plenty of red meat at his London restaurant, Davies and Brook at Claridge’s hotel, the move at Eleven Madison Park — which has four stars from The New York Times and three from Michelin — suggests how different fine dining may look as restaurants reopen and reimagine themselves. The S&P 500 fell about half a percent in early trading on Tuesday, tracking the decline in Europe. The Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.8 percent Oil prices rose as Saudi Aramco joined other oil companies in reporting strong profits for the last quarter. Brent crude gained 1.9 percent, to $68.82 a barrel. It has not closed above $70 barrel since late 2018. West Texas Intermediate gained 1.7 percent, to $65.60 a barrel. A chip-maker’s troubles Infineon, a big producer of semiconductors in Germany, reported “booming” demand for chips as it posted strong quarterly results. But the company warned of continuing supply chain problems and its shares fell. “Demand greatly exceeds supply for the majority of applications,” said the chief executive, Reinhard Ploss, in a statement. Even though its plants are running at “full speed,” he continued, the company still faced supply chain bottlenecks. “We are doing everything we can to provide our customers with the best possible support in this situation.” Saudi Aramco earnings The world’s largest oil producer, Saudi Aramco, reported a 30 percent rise in net income in the first quarter compared with the same period a year ago. The company is joining other energy producers that reported strong earnings this quarter as oil prices continued their recovery from last year’s collapse. “The momentum provided by the global economic recovery has strengthened energy markets,” Aramco’s chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, said in a statement. “Given the positive signs for energy demand in 2021, there are more reasons to be optimistic that better days are coming.” Source link Orbem News #Goldman #June #Live #return #Sachs #Updates #Workers

[wetravopedia-blog]

Two Best Hotels in Mayfair London

Mayfair, the area sandwiched between Hyde Park and Soho, isn’t just home to the Werewolves of London, but also a hub for the most affluent areas, reflected by the swanky restaurants, bars, and designer outlets it has to offer. It’s almost a synonym for luxury and pretty posh considering that it is one of the most substantial districts in the city. There’s never a dull moment in Mayfair with having plenty of things to see and do and the odds that you might cross paths with a celebrity. Visitors must explore attractions like the Handel Museum, Royal Academy of Arts, Berkeley Square, Claridge’s hotel, and Grovesnor Square. While planning your trip we’ll suggest you do a little bit of research for Hotels in London to avoid any kind of hassle during your vacation.

  If you are wondering about good budget-friendly accommodation? We have got you sorted to Best Hotels in London for your comfortable stay below!

 London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square

Located at London's west end Grosvenor Square, London Marriott Hotel is a luxurious five star, fully air-conditioned property. The six-story building houses 237 non-smoking rooms equipped with a work desk, marble bathroom, fluffy robes, luxury bedding, flat-panel TV, hairdryer, ironing equipment, and coffee/tea makers. High-speed internet service is available for an additional fee. Guests can work out in the fitness center, then dine in the on-site restaurant or enjoy a cocktail in the bar. Off-site parking is available, for a charge. The property is in London's Mayfair district, within a few steps from Oxford Street shopping and less than a half-mile to the Bond Street tube station for easy access to all of London's landmarks. London Marriott Hotel is a mile to Piccadilly Circus, one-and-a-half miles to Buckingham Palace, less than two miles to Victoria Station with direct service to all airports and four miles to the Tate Modern. The property is 17 miles away from the London Heathrow Airport. 

 Club Quarters Hotel, Trafalgar Square

Located at 8 Northumberland Avenue, Club Quarters Hotel, Trafalgar Square is a four-star hotel with an on-site restaurant and free Wi-Fi. The nine-story Club Quarters houses 225 rooms equipped with free Wi-fi access, flat-panel cable TV, iPod docking station, air conditioning, a work desk, private bathroom, and complimentary toiletries. Non-smoking rooms are available at request. Guests can choose to relax at the on-site brasserie or enjoy at the Japanese restaurant. Off-site parking is available for a fee, and the front desk is available 24 hours a day. The property is off Trafalgar Square in central London. The National Gallery and Nelson's Column are both within two minutes’ walk. Charing Cross Subway Station is a five-minute walk away. Guests can catch a flight at the Heathrow Airport, 17 miles west of the hotel.

 So, these were the two finest London Hotels and will make your visit even more memorable. 

 Where to get the best deals and how to book hotels online? Explore TravOpedia where you can compare rates and amenities for different properties. You can read the reviews of the guest who stayed there in the past or look into the images of the properties or research over the location of the property on maps or even videos that will help you to judge your stay. 

 If you are also looking for Cheap Flights to London explore TravOpedia to get online promotional codes by exploring the web & that will help you save large.

[sebastiankurz]

A look into some brand new interior design projects – Part 2

Interior design projects are becoming more innovative each year and are a perfect pretext for many interior design companies of different background to team up and produce amazing results. Today we’re continuing to bring you more innovative projects worldwide.

Property in the USA by Ananiev Interiors and Brabbu

The architectural and design bureau N&G Ananiev Interiors was founded in Russia in 2002, currently being composed by the creative duet – Nadezhda and George Ananyev. Though they’re still a small team they’ve managed to hit the spotlights when they engaged in this interior design project alongside luxury brand Brabbu.

The family currently living in this private property imagined this house full of bright and unusual colours. They’ve met the design duet before so a deal was stuck to give a more colourful touch to the home.

The “music lounge” is one of the divisions that further reflects the application of bright colours as well as a playful composition of vintage to modern furnishings. One of the main furniture additions to the home is the mustard-yellow Maya Armchairs from Brabbu with a fierce colour that warms up the room regardless of the season.

Another main highlight of this project is definitely the “art room” which successfully connects extraordinary colour spectrum and fantastic textures and provides a wonderful sensory experience. Walking inside this room almost feels like entering a museum of modern art.

You can also check this one out: Know some of the most amazing interior designers from America

Greybrook House Penthouse (Essential Home)

  The Greybook Penthouse is a dream come true thanks to the combination of Art Déco elements with contemporary living ones. In the brand’s own words:

“The project brief was to create a multi-unit, boutique, residential development in Mayfair. The interior design was to reprise to spectacular effect the Art Deco theme of the building and the design language found within Claridge’s Hotel opposite.”

The Bulthaup kitchen is juxtaposed with a cool green breakfast room upholstery, the master suite features lacquered finish wardrobes, the master ensuite features wall and marbled pattern flooring and there’s also the fact that there’s even a marble staircase that leads to access to the private roof terrace where the people up there can enjoy some stunning views of London city. A perfect mix of luxury and vintage charm can be felt within this property.

One of the furniture highlights in this project is the Russel Bar Chair by Essential Home that perfectly depicts the chairs used in old times. The Mid-century furniture pieces of this brand are known for having a movie inspiration to them so it’s no wonder the Penthouse as a whole has that vintage Hollywood feel to it.

You may also like to read this: These are some of the best European Interior Designers

Pick 6ix restaurant (Kroeze Interieur and Maison Valentina)

Canadian rapper Drake opened a restaurant in Toronto called Pick 6ix, which consists of a partnership between Drake’s record label Ovo and Montreal chef Antonio Park’s restaurant group. The establishment has South American and Japanese influences as well as a capacity for 178 seats.

The highlight here goes to the bathroom of the establishment, designed by Kroeze Interieur and featuring the Symphony freestanding by Maison Valentina, which consists of a wonderful piece handcrafted with the finest materials and adding a luxury touch to this establishment thanks to the golden material revesting the piece.

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and get the latest news about our list of some brand new interior design projects as well as some other inspirational topics in the world on furniture and interior design! Feel free to follow us on social media for more inspiration: Instagram | Pinterest

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from Sebastian Kurz Blog https://www.designbuildideas.eu/look-brand-new-interior-design-projects-2/

[chriskarrtravelblog]

Time for tea: Behind the scenes at Claridge’s

Savour a behind-the-scenes taste of afternoon tea at Claridge’s, a landmark London hotel and royal favourite 

Preparation begins the night before at about midnight,” explains Martyn Nail, Executive Chef at Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair, which has been concocting exquisite selections of finger sandwiches and sweet pastries for the best part of 150 years. “Our touriers (overnight bakers responsible for the breakfast pastries and bread) are the first link in the chain. They begin by making the dough and allowing it to prove, before baking it in the early hours of the morning,” Martyn continues, as he details the well-oiled machine that is Claridge’s kitchen on a normal working day. 

Jérôme Chaucesse (centre), Claridge’s’ pâtissier-in-residence

“They then hand over to the day-shift pastry chefs, who make the cakes and scones. The sandwich fillings are then prepared mid-morning and the sandwiches themselves are assembled just before service.” The near-military precision of the procedures and personnel busy at work behind the scenes is a prerequisite to the seamless service showcased front of house at Claridge’s.

In the grand Foyer, where afternoon tea is served daily, there is, in contrast to the kitchen, a comforting air of calm. Guests are waited on with the utmost patience and diligence by staff impeccably dressed in white, who glide discreetly between tables. The walls are mirrored, lending both an intimate and expansive feel to the room, the latter aided by sky-high ceilings. Hypnotic melodies emanate from the grand pianist and cellist in the corner.

The cakes and pastries are the most difficult aspect to make

It’s no surprise that the elegance of Claridge’s afternoon tea is now synonymous with royalty and the aristocracy, a reputation first earned by the hotel when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited in 1860. 

This five-star London institution has been advocating the hedonistic consumption of afternoon tea for almost as long as it has existed. Almost all of us can empathise with Anna Russell, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, who has gone down in history as the originator of the English afternoon tea. 

It was around 1840 when she first noticed that she became hungry at around four o’clock each afternoon, in that barren (and possibly slightly boring, if you’re a Duchess) time period between lunch and dinner. So the Duchess requested a tray of tea, cake and some bread and butter to be brought to her room, staving off the hunger pangs that usually arrived during the final few hours before her dinner was served at eight. Initially a solitary habit, the Duchess soon realised it was a great opportunity – or excuse – to invite friends over. 

In fact, her lifelong friendship with Queen Victoria marked the start of the monarch’s own penchant for a late-afternoon bite to eat, which grew so strong that the Queen’s favourite cake, the Victoria Sponge, came to be named after her in the final years of her reign. Thus from pragmatic beginnings, afternoon tea flourished into a national love affair and social ritual, with both indulgence and high society at its core.

Ladies take tea together at Claridge’s in 1938. Credit: Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

Nowadays plain bread and better just wouldn’t cut the mustard (sorry, Duchess). Dorrington ham with caramelised apple, calvados and red endive on onion bread spread with cinnamon butter sounds more like it. “Our afternoon tea sandwiches are famous and a great deal of love and care goes into making them,” says Executive Head Chef, Martyn. 

Nevertheless, Claridge’s doesn’t rest on its laurels. The team are constantly innovating in the kitchen, reviving traditional flavours and establishing modern classics with the arrival of each season. “Picking different breads to pair with fillings is exciting: there’s rye, malt, granary, brown, onion or plain white,” continues Martyn. 

While experimentation is encouraged, one rule is always honoured on the sandwich stand: “The perfect afternoon tea sandwich should be two-thirds bread and one-third filling,” states Martyn.

Dainty finger sandwiches

The attention to detail employed by Martyn and his team is impressive. Many guests may not even notice some of the techniques responsible for tiny morsels of added value here and there. The bread, for example, is laterally sliced, unlike bread cut for toast, so that it retains its shape better and is more pleasurable to look at and eat.

Read the full feature in the September/October 2020 issue of BRITAIN.

The post Time for tea: Behind the scenes at Claridge’s appeared first on Britain Magazine | The official magazine of Visit Britain | Best of British History, Royal Family,Travel and Culture.

Britain Magazine | The official magazine of Visit Britain | Best of British History, Royal Family,Travel and Culture https://www.britain-magazine.com/features/inspiration/afternoon-tea-claridges/

source https://coragemonik.wordpress.com/2020/08/25/time-for-tea-behind-the-scenes-at-claridges/