Your Heart's Desire

A new shopping break prescribes retail therapy at The Langham Hotel, London including Champagne, Afternoon Tea, The Regent Street Privilege Card, £50 Shopping Vouchers and more...
From £399 per room per night.

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A Right Royal Day Out

London and royalty go together like scandals and playboy princes. So it’s no surprise that whilst residing regally at the Langham you should want to take a tour of the city’s royal hotspots.

The National Portrait Gallery, where you can get up close and personal with Britain’s royal heritage, is a short hop in a cab or a 15-minute walk from The Langham, in Trafalgar Square. Here is Holbein’s puff-chested Henry VIII (standing as imposingly as it’s possible for a man wearing tights), and Van Dyke’s distinguished Charles I, a man on the verge of losing his head. Today’s royals pose in everything from velvet knickerbockers (yes, that’s Diana’s unerring sense of style in Brian Organ’s portrait), to Scottish kilts, jodhpurs and romper suits.

Tear yourself away from the great and the not-so-good and stroll down Whitehall past the government buildings to Horse Guards Parade. Here, living, breathing pomp and circumstance is on display. Members of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment sit astride patient horses in their gleaming ceremonial armour, with billowing red-feathered helmets. The changing of the guard happens here daily at 11am (10am on Sundays), complete with trumpeters sounding the Royal Salute. Although this Changing of the Guard ceremony is less famous than the one which takes place at Buckingham Palace, you’ll get a lot closer to the action here, as there are no gates to keep you at a distance.

From here, a walk across Horse Guards Parade to The Mall draws your eye down towards the imposing grandeur of Buckingham Palace. Clarence House (on the right) is where, in the Queen Mother’s day, it was said that any hour was cocktail hour. A glance through the gates of Buckingham Palace reveals the motionless Guards in their bearskin hats (not real bearskin these days, we hasten to add). They are in place to prevent you from strolling into the stately 500-room residence and disturbing Her Majesty while she attends to the urgent business of being an international icon. Look up and you will see the balcony where Charles and Diana shared their famous wedding-day kiss.

A royal wave in the direction of the traffic summons a black cab to Kensington Palace where lunch and afternoon tea are served in the airy Orangery. From here you can view your subjects gallivanting and rollerblading through Kensington Gardens. The palace is forever entwined with the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales and the floral tributes laid here on her death. A selection of Diana’s sparkling gowns are housed in the 18th-century Dress Rooms, alongside outfits worn by the present queen and her illustrious predecessors. Stroll through the elaborately decorated Cupola Room and enter the private worlds of Queen Victoria’s Bedroom and Queen Mary’s Bedchamber, where these blue-blooded ladies untied their corsets and caught up on their beauty sleep.

But it’s not quite bedtime for us yet. Hail a cab to Rules restaurant in Maiden Lane near The Strand. More than 200 years old, this is London’s oldest restaurant and houses the King Edward VII Room, where Edward VII regularly dined in private with his mistress Lillie Langtry. Here you can make like a king (or queen) and order some of the kitchen’s famed game dishes, including venison and wild duck, a favourite in royal dining rooms.

Afterwards there’s just time to catch a concert when you end your majestic day at the Royal Albert Hall. The hall was built by Queen Victoria to commemorate the life of her beloved husband, and complements the ornate Albert Memorial across the road in Hyde Park. And with that, it’s time to summon your uniformed chauffeur (ok, your cab driver) and roll back to your very own palace of luxury in The Langham.

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7312 2463
Website: www.npg.org.uk
By tube: Charing Cross or Leicester Square

Household Cavalry Museum, Horse Guards, Whitehall, London SW1A 2AX;
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7930 3070
Website: www.householdcavalrymuseum.org.uk/
By tube: Charing Cross or St James’s Park

Clarence House, The Mall, London SW1
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7766 7303
Website: www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=33
By tube: Victoria

Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7766 7303
Website: www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=30
By tube: Victoria or Green Park

Kensington Palace State Apartments & The Orangery,
Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX
Telephone: +44 (0)844 482 7777
Website: www.hrp.org.uk/KensingtonPalace/KPNewPlanyourvisitLandingPage.aspx
By tube: High Street Kensington

Rules, 35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7LB
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7836 5314
Website: www.rules.co.uk
By tube: Covent Garden

Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7589 8212
Website: www.royalalberthall.com
By tube: Gloucester Road

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