London Life Need to know

London curiosities Do not pass go The Strand

London property of the month

47, Grosvenor Square, W1

HOUSES may have come and gone at 47, Grosvenor Square, W1, and even the address has changed slightly (it was once No 42), but the profile of the people who live there has remained very much the same across the centuries. This elegant, red-brick building has long been the address of choice for the great and the good, counting among its past residents two MPs, at least six aristocrats and philanthropists Sir Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. The building as it stands today dates from the late 1930s and it’s split into apartments, one of which, on the 5th floor, became home, in 1948, to Raine, née McCorquodale (later Countess Spencer), and her first husband, Gerald Legge, later Earl of Dartmouth.

Now for sale with an asking price of £8.5 million, the 2,145sq ft apartment is in need of extensive renovation, so selling agents Wetherell (020–7529 5566; www.wetherell. co.uk) have commissioned award-winning design studio Casa e Progetti to create a CGI impression of what the interiors—inspired by the designs created by David Hicks for Raine Spencer—could look like. The cost for the work, estimated at up to £1.5 million, is not insignificant. However, Wetherell say the fully renovated flat could be worth £10.5 million.

In the hot seat Sophia Money-Coutts

Best cocktail A glass of Champagne, sitting at the 45 Jermyn Street bar

Dream bus route One that will carry me home to Crystal Palace from 45 Jermyn Street without stopping

Favourite building The London Library—it’s crammed with more than a million books

Where do you go in the rain? To the Fortnum’s Food Hall to cheer myself up with a delicious treat North or south of the river South, always What’s the best place in London that no one goes to? The ladies’ loos in the basement of the London Library, where I put my face on before going out. Exceptional lighting

Sophia Money-Coutts is an author and columnist. Her latest novel, ‘Looking Out For Love’, is out now (HarperCollins, £8.99)

The Strand is the start of London’s continuous history. The name’s the clue: it means beach in Anglo-Saxon (as it still does in German). It was up this northern Thames shore, sloping steeply to dry land, that Friesian sailors, aided by changing tides, pulled their boats, establishing a settlement and a food and slave market. They called it Ludenwic. Due to Viking attacks, King Alfred later moved the city back within the repaired city walls. The Saxon name survives in Aldwych.

For 500 years, The Strand was a street of palaces. For royal brides and favourites (Anne Boleyn, George Villiers), protectors (John of Gaunt, Edward Seymour, Oliver Cromwell), courtiers (Robert Devereux, Lord Burghley) and bishops, it was the place to live. Their titles survive in hotel or office names. The Strand itself was ‘constantly adorned with a liquid, noxious mud’, according to one visitor, Pierre-Jean Grosley.

Most travelled by boat. The Strand’s palaces, like Venetian palazzi, faced the river. Briefly the Strand was fashionable. Disraeli called it ‘perhaps the finest street in Europe’. Music-hall songs exhorted revellers to ‘go down the Strand, the place for fun and noise’. Friesian trading boats no longer beach on the riverbank. Lamborghinis park in Savoy Court instead. The Strand’s transmogrified. But it’s still there.

Nicholas Boys Smith is the author of ‘No Free Parking’ (www.bonnierbooks.co.uk)