They confirm that it looks like a major book will be published in the UK this year. This is a new story of the Brown Hotel. The British institution is as unique as it is attractive. This work will be supported by the scholarly historian Andy Williamson. In it, he will demonstrate that the hotel, made possible by the famous James and Sarah Brown, opened its doors in 1832. And not in 1837, as had hitherto been thought. Recapturing these five years of the life of London’s oldest hotel is neither a trivial matter nor a trivial one. This year Brown will mark almost two centuries of glorious life. And you will also continue to enjoy wonderful good health. His story was always interesting. We owe it to a famous pair of self-made hoteliers: James and Sarah Brown. James was originally a butler of one of the British aristocratic families. His wife, Sarah (née Miss Sarah Willis) Lady Anna Isabella Noel, 11th Baroness of Wentworth, was one of Byron’s most valued maids of honor. Baroness Byron received much praise for her marriage to the famous poet and hero of the Greek War of Independence. According to all evidence at the time, Sarah Brown, a combative woman with a formidable personality, had a decisive influence on the beginning and subsequent success of the couple’s hotel.
It opened its doors in a beautiful late 17th-century house on Dover Street. To be precise, at number 23. At first, other residents of that street were not very happy with the opening of a hotel in their neighborhood. After all, the kingdom’s eight peers, three baronets, the Bishop of Ely, and the ambassador of the Tsar of Russia resided there. Acquiring that property was an excellent decision on the part of the Browns. The street was perfect, as the hotel was very close to Bond Street and Regent Street. Reaching Hyde Park or Green Park was a short and pleasant walk. Horrified neighbors soon noted with relief that Brown’s guests did not look at all out of place on that beautiful and charming Mayfair street.
The Brown is possibly the most English hotel in London. Even the name fits perfectly. Like Hotel, Brown is a simple and solid British name, with a combination of vowels and voiced consonants that gives off a very appropriate Saxon genitive. It was the hotel of choice for many members of European royalty who lived in London for pleasure or dynastic reasons. As time passed, the hotel (expanded into a group of eleven separate valuable buildings, among which was the St. George Hotel) became the “pied-a-terre” of the famous British “country squire” families. Those who most valued the prudence and good taste of the managers of the establishment, as well as the excellent service provided to them by the hotel. It was well known that the most prominent clergy of the Church of England preferred it to other more trivial and worldly establishments. As preferred by distinguished doctors, jurists, and academics as well as famous writers: such as Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Everyone had a special affection for Brown. It was common for prominent members of the British elite to refer to their favorite hotel with the words: “I don’t stay in hotels!” I stay at Brown’s!»»I don’t stay at any hotel. I’m living in Brown.
Nor were other eminent personalities indifferent to the hotel’s Victorian – and later Edwardian – charm. Like Alexander Graham Bell. There, for the first time on English soil, he publicly demonstrated the Italian Antonio Meucci’s invention: the telephone. Or like the great President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He decided to spend his honeymoon with his wife Eleanor in that peculiarly English hotel, which in its early days resembled a cozy museum with two entrances, one on Albemarle Street and the other on Dover Street. A little advice. If you visit London and are not staying in a hotel, be sure to have afternoon tea at Brown’s English Tea Room. They will never forget it.
