THE BOSS WILL SEE YOU NOW
Tread the streets of St James’s and you echo the footsteps of the great and the good, the influencers and dealmakers, the movers and shakers of a corner of London which has accommodated the elite since Restoration times. At its heart, St James’s Square; for at least two centuries one of London’s most fashionable addresses until the arrival of gentlemen’s clubs and – ugh, whisper it – commercial establishments prompted the aristocracy to up sticks for nearby Belgravia.
Brass plates by the sturdy doors of these imposing highceilinged edifices now allude to the present occupants’ line of work. These are no longer houses, since 21st century commerce has no need of bedrest. Within, you will find businesses carrying opaque and anodyne titles, and specialising in such as merger arbitrage and special situations equity and fundamental bottom-up approaches to portfolio construction. Through these vestibules flows wealth to an order of decimal places by which a mere millionaire is a veritable beggar in comparison.
The northern side of the square holds the grandest buildings, erected on the most spacious plots. Number 5, formerly Wentworth House, built in the classical Palladian style in the 18th century by Matthew Brettingham the Elder, is one such. Lawrence Stroll set a new rental record for London when he established offices here in 2017. A blue plaque on the adjoining building denotes number 4 as a former residence of Nancy Astor, the first woman MP; it is now the home of the Naval and Military Club, aka ‘The In and Out’, whose president was the late Prince Philip, and
