Scandalous! Look where Meghan’s staying the night before wedding
ITS website boasts that it is a house with 350 years of ‘powerful personalities, debaucherous parties and scandalous affairs’ behind it.
Quite an eye-popping choice, it might seem, for Prince Harry’s bride-to-be to use as a base on her last night as a single woman.
But Cliveden House Hotel – of the notorious Profumo affair, one of the greatest scandals of the Cold War period – is where Meghan Markle and her mother Doria Ragland will stay on Friday, along with a group of her closest girlfriends plus her dress designer and hairdresser.
Harry, as is tradition, will stay elsewhere with his best man, Prince William.
Cliveden, overlooking the Thames at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, will forever be famous as the setting for the raffish poolside party where, in 1961, the married war minister John Profumo was introduced to a ravishing 19-year-old would-be model – naked but for a discreetly placed towel – called Christine Keeler.
Their meeting and subsequent affair almost destroyed Harold Macmillan’s Tory government after it emerged that Miss Keeler had also enjoyed a relationship with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian naval attache who was actually a Soviet spy.
The crisis ended Profumo’s glittering career. He subsequently sought private atonement working in the charity sector and died in 2006, while Miss Keeler passed away last year.
On Friday, it is thought, Meghan could stay in the hotel’s Lady Astor Suite, prices for which start at £1,535 a night. The hotel boasts that it is one of the ‘very grandest suites in England’, with a handmade kingsize bed, a large private terrace and sweeping views over the river.
Or, in tribute to her future father-in-law, she could choose the Prince of Wales Suite, also at £1,535 a night, which comes with a dressing room – ideal for a bride to be – as well as an honesty bar.
Cliveden has long been at the centre of political and social life, but it was while the fabulously wealthy American expats Nancy and Waldorf Astor lived there during the first half of the 20th century that the estate became renowned for its lavish hospitality and glamorous guests.
The politically shrewd Astors entertained a diverse mix from Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to George Bernard Shaw, Gandhi and Henry Ford.
The Cliveden estate is now owned by the National Trust, which leases the house to Iconic Luxury Hotels. A notice on the trust’s website says that it will not be open to the public until 1pm on Saturday – about two hours after Meghan is expected to have left for the 25minute drive to Windsor Castle.
Harry, meanwhile, will be at Coworth Park, a five-star country house a stone’s throw from Windsor and one that has been the venue for many a royal polo match.
But even this is not without a hint of controversy. Coworth is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, one of the richest men in the world, as part of a hotel portfolio which includes the Dorchester on Park Lane .
And not so long ago a starlet called Meghan Markle, on one of her first professional visits to the UK, told her then agent, who had arranged for her to stay at the Dorchester, that she wouldn’t set foot in the place. Meghan apparently took issue with the sultan’s record on human rights, particularly his suggestion that sharia punishments, including flogging, should be meted out to adulterers, homosexuals and women who had abortions.
‘Meghan emailed to say she would never stay at the Dorchester, or any hotels they are involved with. We understood and of course agreed,’ her former commercial agent, Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne, said.
Last year Meghan softened her stance enough to watch Harry play polo at Coworth. No bad thing since the Queen and Prince Charles are personal friends of the sultan – and both Harry and William attended a banquet with him at Buckingham Palace last month.
‘Grandest suites in England’