Artistic Delights

With a range of pleasures and delights at your fingertips, to stay in Leicester Square is to dine at the capital’s ultimate high table. The apex of London’s unrivalled theatre and cinema community, it is the city’s beating heart of artistic enterprise, where the A-List come to unveil their films to the world and where young ingénues arrive with the dream of making it big. With its majestic 19th century amber brick façade standing proudly on the Square’s north-west corner, guests at Victory House are not only witnesses to the theatrics of cinema land, but drawn onto the stage themselves.

A discreet arrival comes as standard, with guests directed to the Leicester Place entrance, a quiet stage door tucked away from the crowds. Once inside their beautifully crafted room, where Art Deco touches meet 1950s cinematic flourishes, guests are cocooned away and able to enjoy a tranquil front row seat as the theatre unfolds. Whether it’s the flashbulbs of an international premiere or the well-heeled crowds making their way to a West End show, guest can join in or simply observe.

For the former, there’s the chance to imitate your favourite auteur and make your own feature film (they have experts on hand to help with equipment and editing, as well as champagne and petit fours for a private premiere), while for the latter there’s the exquisite hotel bar, where guests can enjoy an enchanting glass (or two) of vintage rosé Ruinart champagne served in an Art Deco glass.

With the flourish of a pen, July 1917 saw the issuing of a Royal Proclamation that changed the face of the British monarchy forever, bringing the now iconic House of Windsor into being. Ever since Queen Victoria, young and in love, wed the handsome Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, the royal house had born his German title. But as the First World War rumbled tragically on, reinvention was an inescapable necessity, and for this the family looked close to home. What better symbol of this new chapter in royal history than this quintessentially British riverside town?

From strolls along the Thames Path to meanders through cobbled side streets, visitors to Castle Hotel Windsor are surrounded by enchanting tales of a bygone era. Like the Royal Family, the property has been through countless shifts and reinventions, each leaving behind a cherished legacy: first registered as The Mermaid Inn in 1525, it was during the 1600s the source of home-brewed beers and ciders made by George Pennington —who also introduced his own coin worth a half penny to better serve his customers change—and, by the 18th century, it had acquired a royal warrant setting it on its present course. Today’s guests will find touches of this history embossed in the hotel’s very fabric, whether it’s the image of the mermaid imprinted on the decadent soft fabrics or the Pennington Penny frosted onto the bathroom shower screens.