London Hotel’s sobering secret

The Corinthia hotel located in Whitehall Place is undoubtedly one of London’s premier hotels.

A hotel has stood here since 1885 when it originally opened as the Metropole Hotel.

But it is sobering to consider that during the building’s  illustrious career as a hotel, it was commandeered twice by the military in both the First World War and the Second World War.

The original hotel was requisitioned in WW1 to provide accommodation for government staff, and on the night before the British Expeditionary Force embarked for France on the outbreak of the war in August 1914, its two Commanders-in-Chief in the conflict, Field Marshals John French and Douglas Haig, both stayed in the building.

Reopening as a hotel after the war, the “Midnight Follies” became a well-known cabaret fixture and the English National Rugby team would stay here before a match.

But its tenure as a hotel was sadly short lived as when WW2 broke out, the building again fell under the jurisdiction of the military and was taken over as the headquarters of MI9, who were charged with assisting the escape of Allied Prisoners of War in Germany, especially downed airman escape capture after they had been sot down over axis-controlled countries.

It was also home to the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German Occupied Europe and aid local resistance movements.

After the war the Ministry of Defence continued to use the building, housing the bulk of the Defence Intelligence Staff here.

In 2007 the building was acquired by a consortium who restored the hotel, reopening as the Corinthia.

In a nice nod to its shadowy past, the official announcement of the James Bond movie Skyfall was made at a press conference held at the Corinthia Hotel in November 2011