EMBASSIES

See Also: CLASS The Revolution Has Been Cancelled; CLUBLAND The Travellers Club; EMBASSIES & LEGATIONS, DISAPPEARED; FOREIGN RELATIONS; HIGH COMMISSIONS; THE POLICE The Metropolitan Police, Diplomatic Patrol Group; PALACES St James s Palace; ROMAN CATHOLIC PLACES OF WORSHIP St Anselm & St Cecilia

The French Embassy

Until 1904 Scottish people were entitled to French citizenship.

Location: 58 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7JT (red, orange)

See Also: THE CHEVALIER D'ÉON; PEOPLES & CULTURES The French

Website: http://uk.ambafrance.org

The German Embassy, The Former

The Battle of Waterloo gave Britain and Germany a shared finest hour.

In 1849 No. 9 Carlton House Terrace became the Prussian Embassy. With the formation of the Germany state, the building became the German Embassy. During the First World War the building was not in use. In 1921 it resumed being the German embassy.

In the Franco-German War of 1870-1 Germany defeated France. This had an impact on British attitudes towards German and Germans. A British fear of decline arose just as Britain was at its zenith as global power.

J.K. Jerome's Three Men On The Bummel (1900) was a fictionalized account of a bicycling holiday through the Black Forest. The book was full of the anti-German stereotypes that had emerged since 1871. The book was to become an English language textbook in Germany.

J.M. Barrie modelled Captain Hook on Kaiser Bill.

Location: 9 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AG (red, grey)

See Also: THE HYENA HUNTERS OF SOUTHWARK

Giro

Ambassador Leopold von Hersch owned Giro, an Alsatian. In 1936 the diplomat died while in post. Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946) succeeded him. The embassy retained the dog. The dog died two years later. As a gesture of goodwill, the British government granted permission for its remains to be buried in the western portion of the Terrace's gardens. It was buried with full Nazi honours.

Location: Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AF (red, orange)

See Also: DOGS

The Iranian Embassy

In 1980 six terrorists stormed the Iranian Embassy and took a number of people siege. They were Arab separatists from the oil-rich southern province of Khuzestan. Some members of The Special Air Service (S.A.S.) ended the event, thereby raising public awareness of the secretive specialist Army regiment.

Subsequently, there was a long running dispute about whether or not the Iranian government should pay for the building's restoration.

Location: 16 Princes Gate, SW7 1PT (orange, turquoise)

See Also: FLAGS The Iranian Flag

Website: https://london.mfa.ir/en

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is an American-resident, Indian-born British English-language novelist. His breakthrough book was Midnight s Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981.

The author's Satanic Verses (1988) treated Islam in a controversial manner. In early 1989 a fatwa against him was issued in Iran. He went into hiding. It is reputed some of his bodyguards were members of the's.A.S.. It has been claimed that, in his new restricted lifestyle, the writer became something of a dab joystick at computer games. Slowly he rebuilt a public profile first by appearing on electronic media and then by attending literary conferences and events in an unannounced manner.

In March 1993 the Labour Party arranged for Rushdie to meet the then party leader John Smith in the House of Commons and having the event reported in the media. Two months later Rushdie met the Conservative Prime Minister John Major for half an hour. In September of that year Midnight s Children was named as the best winner in the twenty-five years of the Booker Prize. The following month Rushdie's Norwegian publisher was shot outside his own home. In September 1995 the novelist attended the Writers Against The State debate in Westminster Central Hall. This was the first time since his going into hiding that his attendance at an event had been announced in advance. In 1997 the 15 Khordad Foundation of Qom declared that the bounty on Rushdie's head stood at $2.5m. Thereafter the fatwa petered out. Rushdie returned to living a virtually public life. With his freedom restored, he took to spending much of his time in New York.

See Also: LITERATURE Censorship

Website: www.salmanrushdie.com

Libyan People's Bureau

Yvonne Fletcher

In 1984 W.P.C. Yvonne Fletcher was policing a demonstration that was being held outside the Libyan Embassy. A gunman inside the embassy opened fire on the crowd. W.P.C. Fletcher was hit and died from her wounds on the road. The gunfire continued and another ten demonstrators and police officers were hit.

In 1999 Britain and Libyan reopened their diplomatic relations. Libya accepted responsibility for W.P.C. Fletcher's death and agree to pay compensation to the police officer's mother,

In 2004 Blair met Gadaffi. Subsequently, it was announced that Libya had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme

In 2009 it was reported that Britain and Libya had agreed that anyone who might be tried for Fletcher's murder would be tried in Libya.

In 2012 the interim Prime Minister of Libya laid a wreath at the site of P.C. Fletcher's memorial stone.

In 2021 the High Court ruled that Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk had been jointly liable for the fatal shooting of W.P.C. Fletcher. Four years earlier a case against him had been dropped because national security concerns meant that evidence against him could not be made public.

Location: 5 St James's Square, SW1Y 4AD (purple, yellow)

See Also: CLUBLAND The Travellers Club, The Libyan Thaw; MURDERS

The United States Embassy

In 1999 the United States Congress required embassies to be set 100 ft. back from the street and for there to be co-location of all U.S. facilities on a single site. This led to programme of standardised embassy complexes being built around the world.

In 2009 it was reported that the United States Embassy was moving out of the Grosvenor Square building to a site in Nine Elms. At the time, there were 939 years remaining on the building s lease. The embassy relocated in 2018.

Location: 33 Nine Elms, SW11 7US. The present embassy.

See Also: THE NAVY The Admiralty House, Furniture, Resolutely Present

Website: https://uk.usembassy.gov

The Former, Former United States Embassy

No. 14 Princes Gate is a wedding cake townhouse. Between the building's first and second floors there are four identical stucco heads. These are of male Native Americans wearing feather headdresses. A blue plaque commemorates that during the 19^thC the property had been the home of Junius's. Morgan and of J. Pierpont Morgan.

The house was the residence of Joe Kennedy, the father of the future President John F. Kennedy, when he served as the United States Ambassador to the Court of St James during the years 1937-40. The older Kennedy had a warm regard for the Nazis and eugenics.

In 2010 the building was occupied by The Royal College of General Practitioners.

Location: 14 Princes Gate, SW7 1PU (orange, brown)

The Former United States Embassy

The former American Embassy (1959) in Grosvenor Square was designed by the Finnish-born architect Eero Saarinen.

The United States government is reputed to have tried to buy the freehold of its Embassy building in Grosvenor Square. Considerable informal pressure was applied upon the Grosvenor Estate, which eventually agreed to the sale but with one condition - that the Grosvenors property that had been taken from the family by the American government at the time of the American Revolution should be restored to the family in full. Somebody in Washington D.C. is supposed to have done the financial calculations of what such a restitution would cost and as a result the Grosvenor Estate still owns the freehold of the property.

Location: 30 Grosvenor Square, W1A 1AE (orange, purple)

See Also: THE GROSVENOR ESTATES Mayfair; SOFT POWER SOUNDS REBOUND

Winfield House

Winfield House (1936) occupies a twelve-acre site in Regent's Park. The property was built for Barbara Hutton, the Woolworths heiress.¹ In 1945 she presented the house and grounds to the American people. It became the official residence of the American Ambassador.

Location: Winfield House, The Outer Circle, The Regent's Park, NW1 4RT (orange, red)

See Also: THE ROYAL PARKS The Regent's Park; TOWNHOUSES

Website: https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/our-ambassador/ambassadors-residence

¹. In 2008 the British Woolworths business imploded financially. The following year the administrators closed all of the remaining Woolworths stores in the U.K..

David Backhouse 2024