For centuries literary lions prowled the corridors of Cliveden House. Ahead of the first Cliveden Literary Festival, William Gadsby Peet meets the author and historian guarding the flame
As with many stories of Cliveden House, ours starts with a mistress. Well, five mistresses, to be exact. It is April of 2012 and Natalie Livingstone has just walked into Cliveden for the first time, after her husband – the billionaire property developer Ian Livingstone – acquired the historic building for use as a hotel. ‘Nothing ordinary ever happened here, nor could it,’ is the hotel’s wonderfully fitting new motto.
Upon entering the Great Hall, Natalie finds herself overwhelmed by its magnificence.
“I started looking around and came across five portraits, but with the exception of Nancy Astor, I didn’t know who any of the pictured women were. I was absolutely enthralled, so I began researching their history, which culminated in my first book, The Mistresses of Cliveden.”
Given her background as both a Cambridge history graduate and a journalist, it is no surprise that Natalie – creator of this month’s inaugural Cliveden Literary Festival – felt such a strong connection to these historic female figures. Over a career spanning 15 years, the subjects of her interviews have been as varied as Charlene, Princess of Monaco and Jennifer Lopez. One thread, however, is woven throughout her work: a powerful propensity for telling stories.
“It has always been the very human element of history that I’ve found fascinating, especially women’s history,” she explains. “I find it incredibly humbling to read about the struggles and the sacrifices that women throughout the ages have made. A lot of their tales have been lost by careless archiving from previous generations, or because many women couldn’t write themselves, so I think it’s wonderful to take these previously unheard stories and make them available again to the public.”
And what tumultuous drama her research uncovered!
“Obviously Cliveden is most famous for the events of the 1960s and the Profumo Affair – when Christine Keeler stepped out of the pool naked into the hungry gaze of the then Secretary for War, John Profumo, precipitating an affair that hastened the downfall of the Macmillan government.
“But the very bedrock of Cliveden is scandal. In fact, the reason the house was built in the first place was because the second Duke of Buckingham – a favourite of Charles II – began an affair with a courtesan called Anna Maria who was married to the Earl of Shrewsbury. The Duke actually ended up fighting Anna Maria’s husband in a duel. He won, killing the Earl with a sword and claiming Anna Maria as his own before building Cliveden House as a monument to their affair.”
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Even the grounds have frequently served as a reflection of the intriguing Cliveden tale. The duel Natalie describes is commemorated in brickwork in the shape of a rapier planted in one of the lawns, while at one point even the garden flora became a kind of horticultural memoir.
“During the early 1700s, soldiers returning from the War of the Spanish Succession would want to commemorate their victories. So they often arranged the garden trees in the same sequence as battalions in the battles they’d fought,” explains Natalie.
“The way trees were planted would represent the formation of soldiers in the various participating armies, with each garden illustrating a different victory. It was a kind of status symbol and something about which the Earl of Orkney [owner of Cliveden at the time] felt very, very strongly. The idea was also practised in the gardens at Blenheim, which is the ancestral home of the Churchills.”
Unsurprisingly, the tradition fell from fashion: the soldier trees have long since vanished and the modern day gardens of Blenheim and Cliveden reflect a love of aesthetic pleasure, not the drumbeats of war.
With the lives of Cliveden’s fabulous five – Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury; Elizabeth, Countess of Orkney; Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg; Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland and Nancy Astor – all safely immortalised in print, Natalie turned her attentions to another aspect of the story of this remarkable place.
“During research for the book I discovered that, aside from the wealth of key historical figures involved with the house, like Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill, Cliveden has also inspired literary feats by some of our greatest writers – from Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift to Tennyson and, in the 20th Century, George Bernard Shaw, JM Barrie and Rudyard Kipling.
Nancy Viscountess Astor by John Singer Sargent, one of the five portraits that inspired The Mistresses of Cliveden
“So what I very much want to do with the Literary Festival is to revive that tradition and turn the house into a literary salon once again. You are totally immersed in history when you’re here, and that’s something else I want to bring out: the sense of being connected simultaneously to the past and present. At the festival visitors will be rubbing shoulders with the incredible talent of today in a setting that has seen amazing figures of the past 350 years come and go. It’s something I’m incredibly excited about, and we really do have a galaxy of stars converging on the house that weekend.”
No kidding: the 44 different festival speakers include some of the biggest contemporary names in the fields of history, politics and literature. I ask Natalie whom she herself is most looking forward to seeing. The response is an avalanche of excitement.
“My heroine Amanda Foreman, whose books inspire me every single day; her writing style is incredible. Tina Brown, who is just an idol and an icon. Oh, the list is never-ending! Robert Harris – again, just a literary icon; Sebastian Faulks, the most beautiful storyteller of our time; Ian McEwan, gripping, gripping writer. Howard Jacobson is one of our greatest comic novelists and Simon Sebag Montefiore is someone whom I aspire to emulate, I respect him so much as a historian. There’s not one person I’m not excited about: I would rush to see every single speaker on that programme. I can’t wait.”
Natalie’s ebullience is infectious: I find myself relishing the prospect of watching Michael Gove chair a discussion on politics, sex and scandal. Let us hope that Cliveden House can act as muse for all the festival speakers, as it once did for the poetic genius of Pope – and a captivated audience will find themselves ‘Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove/The bower of wanton Shrewsbury, and love’.
- Cliveden Literary Festival takes place on October 14/15. For further information, including full programme and booking, visit: clivedenliteraryfestival.org
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