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Welcome to the VERANDA Sip & Read Book Club! Each month, we dive in to a book and offer exclusive conversations with the authors behind each tale over on Instagram, along with a perfectly matched cocktail. This month's pick is Olivia Williams's The Secret Life of the Savoy, a fascinating look behind the scenes of one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, the Savoy Hotel in London. Get caught up on our past book club selections here.
Pegasus Books The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Pegasus Books The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
The tag line of The Secret Life of the Savoy, Olivia Williams’s latest book, promises “glamour and intrigue at the world’s most famous hotel,” and, lucky for us, the tales spun in these pages brim with exactly this.
Following three generations of the D’Oyly Carte family, the book begins with its patriarch, the visionary Richard D’Oyly Carte, whose talents in agenting, music, and the theater gifted English culture a bevy of plays and to the city of London the Savoy Hotel, the Savoy Theater on the Strand, and the Royal English Opera House (now known as the Palace Theater). His partnership in the 1870s with W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan resulted in more than a dozen plays, and a good portion of the beginning of the book is devoted to the theater and its role in D’Oyly Carte’s quest to elevate to the stratosphere London’s luxury experience.
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“Compared to what he saw in America and Continental Europe, he lamented that his hometown was lagging behind in entertainment, restaurants and nightlife,” Williams writes. So D’Oyly Carte devoted his life to transforming it. While the wealthy traditionally toured the Continent, D’Oyly Carte hoped he could woo them to cross the Channel with his hotel.
The elevated socializing scene and escapist grandeur that Richard D’Oyly Carte set out to create are explored in these pages in luxurious detail. He “envisaged the modern luxury hotel as a backdrop against which people could admire each other and be admired in turn,” and his desire for luxe leisure came to full fruition with the Savoy. Golden ceilings illuminated carved wood walls, miles of moldings, and impeccable William Morris wallpaper, merging English country-house style with American technological advances like electricity in grand displays of showmanship. Celebrities, artists, and dignitaries alike—the Churchills and Rothschilds, Marilyn Monroe and Lawrence Olivier, Monet and Whistler—flocked to the hotel to see and be seen. Even the novelist Daphne du Maurier, then a child, dined, danced, and partied at the hotel during her family's holidays abroad.
Following Richard's timeline is that of his son, Rupert, and granddaughter, Bridget, each of whom navigate changing tides internationally—including both world wars. When the Blitz rocked London, Alfred Hitchcocks's screenwriter, Charles Bennett, found comfort in the open doors of the Savoy, and a bevy of Hollywood A-listers booked with the hotel while reporting for service, including John Wayne and Clark Gable.
Navigating the changing advances of technology and industry while keeping the hotel at the forefront of luxe travel and leisure experiences over the course of a century brought with it its own challenges, and Williams spares not a detail, her fascination for the Savoy and its founding family producing a prodigious account of their life and times, for all of our benefits. The Secret Life of the Savoy is a star-studded traipse through gleaming history, and a delicious read with which to while away the remaining moments of summer.
VERANDA SIP & READ BOOK CLUB FOR AUGUST 2021
Selection: The Secret Life of the Savoy by Olivia Williams (available via local booksellers, Amazon, or Bookshop)
Start reading with us August 1.
Send Williams your questions via VERANDA's Instagram Stories.
Tune in to Instagram as Williams answers your questions and chats live about The Secret Life of the Savoy later this month.
