MARGOT’S MARVELLOUS MANSION I

t’s not widely known, but Amberwood House was one of the most glamorous addresses in the UK during much of the 1950s and 1960s. Hollywood actors, worldfamous clothes designers, royalty and artists all visited the property, which was the home to the greatest British female dancer to ever wear ballet shoes; Dame Margot Fonteyn.

Dame Margot famously partnered with another star of the dancing world, Rudolph Nureyev, most famously in both Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.

But she had a colourful life off stage as well as on. In 1955 she married Roberto (Tito) Arias, a Panamanian diplomat and, as well as enduring his repeated infidelities, she helped him organise an attempted coup against the government of Panama in 1959.

In 1964 Tito was shot by a rival Panamanian politician, leaving him quadriplegic. Dame Margot later moved back to Panama where she spent the rest of her life and money nursing her husband until his death. The ballerina herself died from cancer in 1991. But before such dramas played out, the pair were the toast of the London society scene at Amberwood House in Knightsbridge. Visitors and guests included Nureyev but also Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, John Wayne, Yves Saint Laurent and Peter Sellers.

The five-bedroom mansion has recently been lavishly overhauled and upgraded by developer K10 Group, which bought the property in 2011, winning planning in 2016.

The house, which has its own cocktail bar, cinema and 12m swimming pool, is for sale at £75m.

See k10group.com for more details.