The house in Stable Yard
Lancaster House stands in Stable Yard, between St James's Palace, Clarence House and the edge of Green Park: a large mansion of pale honey coloured stone that most Londoners have walked past without being able to name. It was begun in the 1820s for the Duke of York, brother of George IV, and passed to the Dukes of Sutherland, who finished it as Stafford House and filled it with some of the most lavish interiors in London. Queen Victoria is said to have told the Duchess of Sutherland, on arriving for a visit, that she had come from her house to the Duchess's palace.
Early in the twentieth century the soap manufacturer Lord Leverhulme bought the lease and gave it to the nation, renaming it after the county he came from. It has been used by the government ever since for receptions, conferences and summits, and it is run today by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It is not a house that can be visited on an ordinary day, which is part of the reason an invitation to it is treated with some seriousness.
An invitation that means exactly what it says
Government receptions are run to a list and a timetable. The invitation gives an arrival window, and it is meant: guests arrive inside it, pass through security with photographic identification in the name on the invitation, and climb the great staircase in a steady stream. Arriving early means waiting outside. Arriving late can mean not arriving at all, because the doors and the list are both in the hands of people whose job is not flexibility.
The same invitation says whom it admits. If it names you alone, go alone. This house's settled advice is that a companion is never added to a government guest list, however the invitation is worded. Evenings like this are why client dinners and private views are a separate kind of booking here: she joins you where the evening becomes your own, not where it belongs to the state.
Arriving inside the window
St James's is easy to reach and slow to drive through on a reception night. Green Park station is a few minutes' walk away, and going on foot from Piccadilly, with the red brick gatehouse of the palace ahead of you at the bottom of the hill, is the most agreeable way to arrive. If you take a car, have it set you down where the invitation directs rather than where the driver thinks is nearest; the approaches around the palaces are controlled, and your driver will not be allowed to wait.
Leave at your hotel anything you do not need. Coats and bags slow both the security line and the cloakroom. Dress as the invitation tells you. If it says lounge suits, it means a dark suit and a tie, and if it says nothing at all, assume the same and you will not be wrong.
Why they end early, and what to do about it
Official receptions are short by design. Speeches come early, the trays are cleared on time and the staff begin guiding people towards the stairs well before the evening feels finished. Most guests leave with an hour or two in hand and nowhere in particular to spend it, which is exactly the moment to have planned for in advance.
The plan need not leave St James's at all. Everything worth having is within five minutes on foot. St James's Place, a short walk up from the palace, holds both the house with the American Bar and the one whose martini needs no introduction. The Rivoli Bar is at the top of the hill on Piccadilly. For dinner, Wiltons on Jermyn Street has been serving fish and oysters to quiet tables for longer than anyone can remember, and its panelled rooms suit a conversation that began under chandeliers.
The meeting, and the hours after
Set the meeting for fifteen minutes after the time the invitation says the reception ends, at the bar you have chosen. Tell Tamsin the address, the time and the first name you will give, and your companion will already be there when you walk in, settled at a table, with nothing to explain. She is handed the fee in person at the start, as always, and it is not raised again.
Three hours at £700 covers a drink and a proper dinner. Four hours at £900 leaves room for the evening to wander. If colleagues from the reception want to come along, say so beforehand. She is introduced by her first name and nothing more, and the note on what to say when an acquaintance stops at your table applies here with particular force, since half the room you have just left will be dining within a few hundred yards of you.
Company that suits the aftermath
What is wanted after a reception is calm: somebody unflustered and easy to talk to, content to hear about the speeches without needing to have heard them. From the blondes, Nancy is the natural choice. She is thirty, the most experienced company on the list and the least interested in saying so, with a gift for making a hard day sound survivable without ever saying that is what she is doing. Cindy, who lives in Chelsea, is at her best in early evenings and the last of the daylight, which in summer is exactly when Lancaster House lets its guests go.
For a guest who wants to stay entirely within St James's, Karolina asks for Wiltons herself, lives ten minutes away, and is perfectly comfortable with a guest who has spent two hours making conversation and would now rather say very little.
Filed under: most of the names in this piece are also hung in the blondes drawer of the the cabinet.
Questions this piece raises
This house advises against it in every case. Government guest lists are submitted and checked in advance, and they are not the place for a companion's name. She meets you afterwards, which in almost every case is the better part of the evening anyway.
The invitation states the times and they are kept. Most evening receptions run for around two hours, with the speeches early, so plan the meeting for shortly after the stated end rather than leaving it open.
Indoors and close by. Both are on St James’s Place, a few minutes on foot from Stable Yard, and either is a far better meeting place than a doorway on Cleveland Row. Tell Tamsin which you have chosen and your companion will be waiting inside.
More of the long view
Put the long view to use
The evening this describes is one message away, and Booking shows how plainly it confirms.