page_title: The Dorchester
section_title: 1931–1945
hierarchical_section_title: The Dorchester / History / 1931–1945
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of William Somerset Maugham A portrait of W. Somerset Maugham
context_page_description: The Dorchester is a luxury hotel on Park Lane and Deanery Street in London, to the east of Hyde Park.
  Throughout its history, the hotel has been closely associated with the rich and famous. During the 1930s, it became known as a haunt of numerous writers and artists such as poet Cecil Day-Lewis, novelist Somerset Maugham, and the painter Sir Alfred Munnings. It has held prestigious literary gatherings, such as the "Foyles Literary Luncheons", an event the hotel still hosts today. During the Second World War, the strength of its construction gave the hotel the reputation of being one of London's safest buildings, and a host of political and military luminaries chose it as their London residence. Queen Elizabeth II attended the Dorchester when she was a princess on the day prior to the announcement of her engagement to Philip Mountbatten on 10 July 1947. The hotel has since become particularly popular with film actors, models and rock stars, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton frequently stayed at the hotel throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The hotel became a Grade II Listed Building in January 1981, and was subsequently purchased by the Sultan of Brunei in 1985.
context_section_description: The new Dorchester Hotel was feted with a grand opening on 18 April (21 April also cited) 1931 by Lady Violet Astor. The Dorchester quickly gained reputation as a luxury hotel. During the 1930s it became known as a haunt of numerous writers and artists such as poet Cecil Day-Lewis, novelist Somerset Maugham, and the painter Sir Alfred Munnings. There were prestigious literary gatherings, including "Foyles Literary Luncheons", an event the hotel still hosts. Shortly after the opening, Sir Percival David, a leading admirer of Chinese porcelain, moved his growing collection from the Mayfair Hotel to the Dorchester, where he kept it in his suites for many years. Danny Kaye began appearing in cabaret at the hotel in the 1930s, initially earning £50 a week. Many blues and jazz artists appeared at the hotel, including Alberta Hunter and the Jack Jackson Orchestra. In 1934, Hunter and her orchestra recorded Noël Coward's "I Travel Alone" and Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" at the hotel; both Coward and Porter were fans. It also became a rendezvous for many businessmen; it was at the Dorchester that British Petroleum formed a joint Collaborate Committee with ICI in 1943.
  During the Second World War, the strength of its construction gave the hotel the reputation of being one of London's safest buildings. On its opening, Sir Malcolm McAlpine declared it to be "bomb-proof, earthquake-proof and fireproof," and the only damage inflicted on the building by the Luftwaffe during the war was several broken windows. Some felt the communal air-raid shelter in the basement to be insufficiently exclusive and retreated to the hotel's underground gymnasium and Turkish baths, which had been converted into a shelter by Victor Cazalet. Its wartime clientele included such political and military luminaries as Lord Halifax (Foreign Minister), Oliver Stanley (Minister for War), Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal (Chief of the Air Staff), Duff Cooper (with his wife Lady Diana Cooper), Oliver Lyttleton (President of the Board of Trade) and Duncan Sandys (Financial Secretary to the War Office). Halifax and his wife took eight rooms as well as a chapel in the hotel, and when possible he enjoyed trysts with his mistress, Alexandra "Baba" Metcalfe, who was also staying in the hotel and concurrently having an affair with Dino Grandi, Mussolini's representative in London. 
  General Dwight D. Eisenhower took a suite on the first floor (now the Eisenhower Suite) in 1942 after having previously stayed at Claridge's, and in 1944 he made it his headquarters; Kay Summersby, his chauffeur and purported mistress, and Roosevelt's representative Averell Harriman also stayed there thanks to its reputation as a safe haven. During a dinner party which Harriman attended in the Dorchester, the bombing was so intense that guests came down to join him there as it was safer than in the upper-floor rooms. Bostonian Sherry Mangan of Time was one of several American correspondents who stayed at the hotel during the war, meeting the Trotskyist Sam Gordon in 1944, who asked if the Dorchester was safe from air raids, to which Mangan assured him that "every fifth columnist in London is staying here". Other hotel guests reflected the directors' wide-ranging political beliefs: it was at once the base for the Zionist movement's leaders, including Chaim Weizmann, as well as a group of upper-class British anti-Semites, including Margaret Greville. According to Cecil Beaton the clientele was a "mixed brew"; to its wartime chronicler, it was "a building in which the respectable and the dubious mixed by the thousand, knocking back cocktails and indulging in careless talk". In March 1945, Ernest Hemingway and Time correspondent and lover Mary Welsh stayed at the Dorchester, where they were entertained by Emerald, Lady Cunard, who had a three-room suite on the seventh floor.
caption: Somerset Maugham
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