London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Kensington.
It’s an embarrassment of riches.
Which – counterintuitively – is a problem.
Because if you’re a guide, the question isn’t what do you put in.
It’s what do you leave out.
You simply cannot get everything that deserves a place on a Kensington Walk into two hours. Or even two hours plus. Something has to give. Some very good things have to be left on the cutting room floor.
Take Kensington Square.
It’s so rich in character, in stories, in history, in architectural felicities – and above all in glorious, gossipy, biographical delights – that you could very easily build an entire walk around it.
Just that one square.
But to do that would be a bit like sailing round Ellis Island and claiming you’ve seen New York.
You haven’t.
You’ve missed Manhattan.
And that simply won’t do.
Let me give you an example.
On my Kensington Walk I do Nos. 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 27, 28, 33. South side. West side. For good measure, a lovely stop on the north side – where the wisteria is just now doing its thing, in full, extravagant bloom.
That’s nine, ten houses in the square.
But time being what it is, Nos. 14 and 15… have to be passed over.
Now, I pass them over.
But you shouldn’t.
So here’s the workaround. The sleight of hand.
I say to the group: “We’re just going to walk past Nos. 14 and 15. There are wonderful stories attached to them – but alas, we simply don’t have the time. If we did everything in Kensington Square that deserves to be done, this would be a four-hour marathon.”
Pause.
“However… don’t despair. I’m going to do right by you.”
“Take a good look at these two houses as we go by. Photograph them if you like. Fix them in the mind.”
“Because this evening, I’ll be sending you a follow-up note. A sort of Kensington afterglow. A keepsake. A little forget-me-not.”
“The centrepiece will be a beautifully produced PDF – the Kensington chapter from the London Walks book. And alongside it, half a dozen other Kensington goodies.”
“And among them… the story of these two houses.”
“And the remarkable – the quite extraordinary – women who lived in them.”
So my Kensington Walkers get the works.
They get the walk.
And then they get the best of what didn’t quite make it in.
The cutting room floor… restored to glory.
And it’s just occurred to me – these two houses…
They are picture perfect for London Calling.
So here you go.
Here’s the first of them.
Here’s No. 14 Kensington Square.
And in particular… the lady of the house.
Margot Asquith.
Now then. Fasten your seatbelts.
Because Margot Asquith did not do dull.
Born Margot Tennant in 1864, she married H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, and promptly became one of the most formidable, sparkling, talked-about women in London.
And when I say talked-about, I mean she did most of the talking.
She had wit. Real wit. The sort that draws blood.
She had nerve. Social nerve. Political nerve. Personal nerve.
And she had absolutely no hesitation in deploying any of it.
Kensington Square suited her perfectly.
And for the record, 14 Kensington Square was Margot Asquith’s last house in London. Widowed, she spent the last 17 years of her life at 14 Kensington Square. And, yes, it suited her perfectly.
Because this is a square that has always attracted people who know who they are. And Margot Asquith knew exactly who she was.
Let’s start with the tongue.
There’s a famous exchange with Jean Harlow.
Harlow, in her American way, is said to have pronounced Margot with the final “t” – Mar-got.
Margot, without missing a beat, replied:
“No, no, my dear. The ‘t’ is silent – as in Harlow.”
Which is vintage Margot. A correction… and a demolition… in one perfectly aimed sentence.
Or take this. A young woman said to her, “Lady Asquith, I’m afraid I’ve been rather indiscreet.”
Margot replied, “My dear, we are all indiscreet. The question is… with whom?”
You wouldn’t cross her lightly.
But here’s the thing.
She wasn’t just a society wit tossing off bons mots like confetti.
She was at the centre of power.
Her husband, Asquith, was Prime Minister through some of the most critical years in modern British history. The run-up to the First World War. The war itself. Cabinet tensions, political intrigue, the lot.
And Margot was right there. Hosting. Observing. Commenting. Influencing.
Her drawing rooms were political theatres.
People came not just to see the Prime Minister.
They came to experience Margot.
And she saw everything.
She kept diaries. Wonderful diaries. Sharp, observant, sometimes devastatingly frank. If you want to know what power looked like from the inside in Edwardian London, you read Margot.
And then comes the summing up.
And what a life it was.
Margot Asquith had charmed Benjamin Jowett, the great Master of Balliol.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate, gave Margot Asquith a private recital of Maud.
Margot Asquith had watched the young Duchess of Leinster making eleven flawless curtsies to royalty at an assembly.
Margot Asquith had launched a dreadnought.
General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, knelt in prayer with Margot Asquith in a railway carriage.
Admiral Lord Fisher took Margot Asquith in his arms and waltzed with her in a Cabinet ante-room – one of the towering naval figures of the age.
And on August the 4th, 1914, as Britain went to war, Margot Asquith had wept with the German ambassador while he told her Germany had “never counted” that old Belgian treaty.
And then the final flourish.
Winston Churchill – for whom, in 1915, Margot Asquith could foresee “no political future” – became the twelfth of the thirteen Prime Ministers she had known.
Twelve Prime Ministers known.
And the thirteenth?
She married him.
That’s not a life.
That’s a front-row seat to history.
And on that note – we’ll leave Margot holding the floor.
See you tomorrow.