A controversial thing to say perhaps with the modern Olympics having been born just a few miles away in Much Wenlock but Upton Cressett will be an Olympics free zone this summer. I’ll be ignoring the running, swimming and discus throwing for a range of personal reasons, not the least that it could have been the most perfect stage to convert the world to the glories of cricket – but no, the sport (imagine the Olympic gold showdown being hosted at Lords) was passed over despite the shorter form of the game, especially 20-20, being one of the fastest growing and exciting international sports in the world.
What I am looking forward to watching this summer – from the bar – are the dancing opportunities with the
long awaited opening of 5 Hertford Street, Robin Birley’s new Mayfair club in a sprawling set of exquisitely chic and quirky rooms, with a tunnel of booths, dining rooms, nightclub, library, cinema and bar. They all
shimmer invitingly in the dim lights like a luminescent tortoise shell, just off Shepherd Market. While there has been a glut of private members’ clubs opening in Mayfair recently, including the spived up new Arts Club, a multi-million makeover at Morton’s and Little House Mayfair, a sister to Soho House, 5 Hertford Street will
be the club that London will want to join.
Taki used to say that one of the greatest pleasures in his life was stepping off the Concorde from New York and being driven straight to the bar at Annabel’s where he knew he would always encounter the prettiest girls in London, as well as old friends, not to mention a raffish selection of society boulevardiers. I am sure — judging by the eclectic members (and dogs) present at the walk-round I attended in late May — that 5 Hertford Street will be successful for the same reason.
There are two types of clubs. There are the type you join to avoid people you know (such as the Clermont
Club, which ironically, in the 1960s, was the smartest club in London) and there are those where you go because you want to bump into old friends, and the barman will know your name and your favourite
cocktail. In The End of the Affair, Graham Greene has his protagonist Maurice Bendrix take his love rival — a dullard civil servant with whose wife Bendrix had conducted an affair — to lunch at the Authors’
Club to inform him of his wife’s betrayal. In the torturous scene over lunch, Bendrix tells his rival that he chose the Author’s Club precisely because they would be in no danger of encountering anybody either of them knew.
Happily, 5 Hertford Street is not going to be that sort of club. London needs a club that is private, exclusive and for a certain sort of person who does not want to be surrounded by Damien Hirst Spot paintings or skulls and Russian professionals propping up the bar. For too long, London’s private member clubs have become glorified versions of St Tropez beach clubs, where money is the only qualifier for membership.
The point about clubs is that, by definition, every club is not for everybody. Just as every great biography often reveals as much about the character of the author as his or her subject, so with club proprietors. A club has to reflect the personality of its owner, and 5 Hertford Street does not disappoint. From the moment you walk into the entrance hall, and are greeted by a splendid hunting portrait by Sir William Orpen (a contemporary of the portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley, Robin’s grandfather), or step downstairs into the dimly lit basement nightclub known as Loulou’s — where the red velvet cushions are even lusher and sexier than the navy Neisha Crosland zebra print stripes on the sofas at Annabel’s — you know you are happily back in Birley clubland. Namely a land of ruthless, idiosyncratic and perfectionist good taste.
The wait has well been worth it. Opening a club slightly later than envisaged is a Birley family trademark. Robin’s father Mark famously delayed the opening of Mark’s Club for many months because he wasn’t happy with the chandelier that was to hang in the entrance hall. Perfectionism has always been the Birley way and may such obsession with detail long continue. One of the cleverest things about the enormous 18th century townhouse of Robin’s club is that its eclectic mix of rooms, floors and dining rooms pulls off the trick of making the members ofthe old Birley clubs – George, Harry’s Bar, Annabel’s, Mark’s – feel at home, all under one roof, whilst also boldly re-inventing the Birley interior magic gift in a bold and original new way.
Tom Wolfe always used to say that details are the window into the soul. After being shown into the extraordinary ladies’ loos at 5 Hertford Street, with their diamond pink encrusted marble sink surrounds, I can’t imagine it will be long before Birley is approached by World of Interiors to photograph what will surely becomethe most talked-about loos in London. At Chatsworth, Debo Devonshire famously obsessed about creating the most comfortable and most tasteful public loos for any stately home — but Robin has raised club lavatory interior design to an art form. The men’s are smaller but I was glad to see that the chosen lavatory maker of choice is Crapper, the Asprey of old fashioned lavatories.
One of the most successful features of 5 Hertford Street — which feels like a private house — is the terrace courtyard. Not so many years ago, if you wanted to smoke in London at some glitzy club or party, you were herded outside on the street or made to stand in the car park. No self-respecting London club opens today without addressing the loopholes in the smoking laws and the Birley terrace — like a courtyard inside a grand palazzo in Rome — is even more ingeniously conceived and executed than the small sculpture garden smoking terrace at the Club at the Ivy. To accompany the Birley Cigar Shop, having a private Cigar Courtyard is the trump card that leaves the rest of Mayfair private members’ land in the social dust.
Other than Loulou’s, I’m also also especially looking forward to the Masterpiece collectors art fair this year as Spear’s has its own booth. Masterpiece is the Maastricht of the Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) universe – showing the ‘best of the best’ for the UHNW collector, whether they are looking for a vintage ex-racing Ferrari or an early Fontana. Like last year, we are are hosting a debate in the opening morning of the fair with VIP dealer panelists being invited to talking first for three minutes on a piece they are selling at Masterpiece – and why they almost cannot not bare to part with – and then speak again about an item from another stand at Masterpiece which they crave and would like to own.
The point of the debate it to ask ‘What is a Masterpiece?’. Dr Johnson’s Dictionary describes a Masterpiece as being ‘A Capital Performance. Anything done or made with extraordinary skill’. But the ‘M’ word has become overused today. The idea of a Masterpiece originated in Europe in late Middle ages – especially in Holland – andreferred to a virtuouso work by a craftsman that won him entry into a professional guild. A ‘masterpiece’ was what made him a Master of his craft as opposed to a mere journeyman. So the creation of a Masterpiece is about transcending the ordinary into something that becomes close to the sublime.
Can a nightclub ever be termed a Masterpiece? Is there even such a thing as a guild of nightclub proprietors ? Robin Birley has certainly served his Mayfair and City apprenticeships, first with Birley sandwich bars (where he employed the classical architect Philip Jebb to design his shops and glass shelves) and later in returning a jejeune and tired Annabel’s back to profit. When asked to define a Masterpiece, Cyril Connolly said that we think of a work of art as ‘good’, part of that judgement and thought is a ‘desire that other people should agree with us’. Loulou’s opens on June 11th. I expect tout London to be queuing around into Curzon Street.