These days, Sir Winston Churchill is perhaps best known as the key influence on that guy who in turn is, these days, perhaps best known as the husband of the UK’s 715th most followed tableware influencer. Before that though, he — Churchill this is, not Boris, apart from in his own head — was the prime minister who led Britain into the Second World War: a move signed off in the very room that I am currently standing in.
‘Yes, lots of big decisions were taken right here,’ I am told by my guide, who tomorrow will take Princess Anne on the same tour. Princess Anne is probably more au fait with this postcode than me, so won’t need to be told that from the window, you can look down on Henry VIII’s wine cellar, or up at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s penthouse, or across at 10 Downing Street or that clock with the hole in it by the Number Two that marks the time at which Charles I was beheaded (apparently they have to vet anyone who stays in here, lest they take advantage of the vantage point and get a bit Lee Harvey Oswald).
P-Anne would also probably feel more comfortable in rooms with six metre high ceilings and four-poster beds and big, grand oak desks rather than — as I do — be almost too terrified to touch anything, much less order in a burger and stick Netflix on the very, very big TV. In truth it almost feels a shame to have a TV in here. Any semblance of modernity in this building feels a little jarring: like when you go down to the gym and hear thud-thud-thud house music of the kind that has been the soundtrack of every gym since 1066 rather than a minstrel playing Greensleeves on a fiddle.
British history is loudly and proudly evident in every last square foot of Whitehall’s Old War Office, now lavishly rebranded as the Raffles at the OWO. And there are a lot of square feet. Eight-hundred-thousand or so containing nine (great) restaurants, three bars, a spa, a ballroom, preposterously high-ceilinged suites named after very important persons and private residences that have thus far been snapped up by Rebel Wilson and the president of Goldman Sachs International. If you fancy these two as neighbours and have a spare £100 mil kicking around, the five-bedroom penthouse is still available. Failing that, a grand will get you one night in a small room not named after a very important person.
In other words, staying here is very much off limits to the likes of you and me. But there are plans to try to tempt people who actually live in London and aren’t called Jacob Rees-Mogg down here to eat, drink and party, and I hope this happens. Because a) particularly when I’m shown the Spy Bar, I can imagine bumping into some interesting people while having a nightcap if such people are allowed in. And b) because it would be a shame if a landmark such as this were to become (yet another) address frequented only by British history fetishists with dubiously deep pockets from America or the Middle East. This is a beautiful, grand place that everyone should get to see: not just in the next Bond film.
