| Langham Hotel | |
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| Location | 1c Portland Place, Regent Street, Marylebone, London, England, United Kingdom |
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| Opening date | 1865 |
| Rooms | 380 |
The Langham, London is one of the largest and best known traditional style grand hotels in London. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. It is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World marketing consortium.
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The Langham, London was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets, thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts in England. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales. After the original company was liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870 a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the miserly multi-millionairess, Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Electric light was installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham.
The Langham continued to be a favoured spot with many high profile political figures and members of the royal family throughout the twentieth century, including Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Princess Diana.[1] Other celebrity guests included Noel Coward, Wallis Simpson, Don Bradman, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Ayumi Hamasaki.
The Langham, London was hard hit by the Great Depression and the owners attempted to sell the site to the BBC, but Broadcasting House was built on the other side of the road instead. During World War II, the hotel was used in part by the Army and then damaged by bombs and forced to close. After the war, it was occupied by the BBC as ancillary accommodation to Broadcasting House, and the corporation purchased it outright in 1965.
One notorious BBC employee who stayed at the Langham is Guy Burgess, who would later become known as one of the 'Cambridge Five', a spying ring who fed official secrets to the Soviets during the Cold War. A BBC internal memo reveals that upon being unable to access his room in the hotel late one night, Burgess attempted to break down the door with a fire extinguisher.[2]
The ballroom became the BBC record library and programs such as The Goon Show were recorded there. In 1980 the BBC unsuccessfully applied for planning permission to demolish the building and replace it with an office development designed by Norman Foster. In 1986 it was sold to Ladbroke Group for £26 million, which purchased the non-US Hilton business in 1987 and eventually reopened the hotel as the Langham Hilton in 1991 after a £100 million refurbishment. New owners extended the hotel and carried out other refurbishments between 1998 and 2000. Further renovation took place between 2004–09, at an estimated cost of £80 million.
The hotel featured in the James Bond film GoldenEye, its entryway doubling in an exterior shot for St Petersburg's Grand Hotel Europe.[3] Only the exterior was filmed at the hotel, the interior was filmed in a studio. The Langham is also featured in Michael Winterbottom's 1999 film Wonderland. The Langham Hotel was also used as the main hotels external shots for Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsens 2001 "Winning London" made for TV movie.
The hotel is now part of Langham Hotels International (based in Hong Kong), and is the flagship hotel of the group. The hotel has a five star classification. A further round of refurbishment, costing £80m was completed in April 2009. The reconfigured Langham now has 380 rooms, down from 425, a restored Palm Court which has been serving afternoon tea since 1865, a new business centre and 15 function rooms including The Grand Ballroom which holds up to 375 guests for a reception. The new spaces join the Artesian bar, The Landau restaurant and the private dining room, Postillion, created by designer David Collins.
On March 19, 2010 a City of Westminster Green Plaque was unveiled by the writer and former M.P. Gyles Brandreth. The plaque commemorated the meeting at the Langham in August 1889 between Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Marshall Stoddart. Stoddart commissioned the two other men to write stories for his magazine Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Sign of Four which was published in the magazine in February 1890. Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray which was published in July that same year.[4]