Just a quickie - a visit to Potsdam

As you may or may not be aware, depending on whether we're Facebook friends, I have arrived in Germany! My first few days in the south-western university town of Tübingen were something of a mixed bag - I'm sure that that'll eventually find its way into a blog post somehow - and so, before the start of Tübingen's semester in October, I've temporarily decamped about as far as it is possible to go while staying within Germany's borders. I'm getting away for a little while to see the sights of the German capital with my friend Rachel, who is spending part of her Year Abroad here in Berlin.

On Saturday, we went to Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg, to the south of Berlin, visiting some of the city's many palaces - here are a handful of the pictures I took.

Wish you were here - Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Ahead of departing for my Year Abroad, I've been contemplating making a few changes to my blog. I'm hoping, at least, that the next twelve months or so will give me a huge amount of material to write about - if all goes to plan, I should have lots of interesting things to cover. Heck, if it all goes spectacularly awry, that'll be even more exciting, right?! In any case, I'm pleased to say that there are a few ideas in the pipeline, the first of which is to write a regular series on my blog to keep you updated on my travels.

You might already have seen my first Five Free Things post about our recent trip to London, but I've been thinking about a series in which I could tell you a bit about my more general whereabouts and share with you some of my favourite photos and just a few short captions - like postcards, if you will. That's the idea behind my Wish You Were Here posts, the first of which comes to you from Amsterdam.

Wanting to get away for a short break before the new term begins in earnest, we spent a few days there at the end of August after getting lucky on lastminute.com. We stayed at the gorgeous NH Barbizon Palace, whose staff were absolutely wonderful throughout, even giving us a free continental breakfast when we checked out at the ungodly hour of 5am! The hotel is directly opposite Centraal Station and just a short tram-ride from Amsterdam's main attractions, of which we took full advantage; over the course of our four-day stay, I'd hazard a guess that we averaged around ten museums, two canal cruises, and a generous glug of Heineken.

Top: A passenger ferry crosses the IJ in front of Amsterdam's futuristic EYE Film Institute, with A'DAM Toren in the background.

Above: Passing beneath Magere Brug on a canal cruise on the first day of our visit. City legend has it that the original bridge, built in 1691, was constructed for two wealthy sisters who lived on opposite sides of the Amstel. But the origins of the bridge's name are disputed; according to one story, it is derived from the sisters' surname, Mager. In another version, the sisters, though rich, could only afford to build a very narrow structure - hence its name, meaning 'Skinny Bridge'.

Top: Dancing houses at the Damrak. These beautiful buildings were on our route into the city each day. The Damrak runs from Centraal Station in the north to Dam Square in the south, and, along the way, is home to the famous De Bijenkorf department store.

Above: Wandering in Vondelpark. It's the largest park in the city and probably the nation's most famous, just a stone's throw from three of our favourite attractions at Museumsplein: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a museum of modern and contemporary art; the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands' national museum; and the Van Gogh Museum. Though at one point we got caught out in a thundery downpour, our Vondelpark walkabout was one of the highlights of our trip - the green parakeets, who live wild in the park, and the art installation of singing swings were my personal favourites.

Top: Gazing up at the Royal Palace, or even Koninklijk Paleis op de Dam, if you fancy having a go at pronouncing that. Set on Dam Square at the heart of the city, the palace is right in the thick of it - it's not often you'll find an official royal residence opposite Madame Tussaud's on one side and a shopping mall on the other! If, like me, you're a bit of a geek and have a thing for European royalty, you'll love 'Journey in Time', an exhibition on six hundred years of Dutch history, including the story of the House of Orange at De Nieuwe Kerk, where reigning monarchs King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima tied the knot in 2002.

Above: We visited Amsterdam's Hortus Botanicus, which, at three-hundred-and-seventy-five years old, is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. It's one of a number of attractions we could access for free - yes, free - with the I amsterdam City Card. But more on that later...!

Above: A view over the city from Skylounge Amsterdam - a wonderful way to spend our final evening and round off our visit. The bar perches atop a hotel just a couple of minutes from the station, and it's the perfect place to relax with a glass of wine or a hot chocolate (or, indeed, both) while taking in breathtaking panoramic views across the city. You'd be forgiven for thinking it an expensive place to visit, what with it being attached to a Hilton, but we were treated to complementary nibbles, and even a second cup of chocolate at no extra cost. 

And, of course, the views are worth every cent.

Procrastination, apple strudel and Ultravox

Joy unbounded, exam season is upon us once again. I've already had three and have five more to come, so I ought to be chained to my desk in a frantic flurry of revision. Hence I'm writing this blog post.

To be fair, I've done three Russian practice papers today, so I'm not feeling too guilty. (Also, it's unlikely but possible that uni teachers may see this, so we'd better at least look busy).

Anyway, some of you might know already that I took a jaunt to Austria during the Easter holidays with some lovely pals at the University's German Society, and over the last few days as the enormity of end-of-year exams has hit me, I've been pining for the clear blue skies and gargantuan ice cream sundaes of Vienna. So here are a select few of the 328 pictures I took over the course of our three-day stay (yes, really).

Our first excursion of the trip was to Schönbrunn Palace, one of the Austrian Imperial Family's summer homes. The palace and its grounds are absolutely beautiful, and enormous; the estate is home to Vienna's Tiergarten, where I saw actual, real-life pandas for the very first time! Inside the palace itself, we saw such exciting things as Schönbrunn's answer to the Versailles Hall of Mirrors and Franz Josef I's deathbead. 

Here's Schönbrunn from the famous Gloriette, with the city of Vienna beyond. As you can see, we were blessed with some beautiful weather for at least the first part of our trip.

A view over Vienna and the mountains in the distance from Tiergarten Schönbrunn. In 2012, it was voted Best European Zoo, and it's easy to see why. Everything is very clean and well-kept, and there's more than enough to keep you occupied for a day; we spent the afternoon there, having explored the palace in the morning, and didn't manage to see everything, so I'll definitely be back for a second visit at some point!

As I've already said, there were some exciting animals that I hadn't seen in the flesh before, like the afore-mentioned pandas. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a good picture of one, because it turns out that they eat bamboo at such a ferocious speed that every photo I took of them was blurry.

Inside the Monkey House at Tiergarten Schönbrunn. A lot of the original baroque buildings at the zoo are still standing - the Kaiserpavillon, below, and the Biedermaier Giraffe House were completed in 1757,  remain in use today, although they've been through many different guises since then. Of course, the animal houses have been thoroughly modernised, and it was fascinating to see how the old has been incorporated into the new; in spite of its age, the Tiergarten does feel very modern and up-to-date.

The Kaiserpavillon at Schönbrunn. It was originally built for the Imperial Family to entertain their guests, and it's now a rather posh tearoom, where I enjoyed sitting on the terrace with a Wiener Melange.

A rear view of Schloss Schönbrunn from its grounds (this is the last picture of it, I promise).

An U-Bahn platform at Westbahnhof. I'm very proud that I managed to successfully use the underground every day when we went into the centre of Vienna. Probably the most exciting part of this education in subterranean transport was making our friend, the Accordion Man, who boarded a train with us at Rathaus with a little red trolley, out of which came his accordion. To make things even more awkward, because as you can imagine, everybody's trying to avoid making eye contact with everyone else while A.M. is blissfully unaware of the hilarity he's caused, each time he received a bit of change, he'd play said accordion faster and faster.

Being serenaded once on the tube was quite amusing in itself, but after telling everybody back at the hostel about the performance earlier that afternoon, we got on the tube to go back into town for dinner and what should we see in front of us getting into a carriage but a little red trolley! Apparently our faces were a picture when we were trapped with him on a rush-hour train for the second time that day, but it made for some funny memories.

As well as a more amusing breed of busker, Vienna is home to such fine specimens of authentic Wiener Apfelstrudel as this one above. I think I had perhaps three rounds of strudel during the trip and this, in a small restaurant down a sidestreet in the city centre, was probably the best.

The second full day in Vienna and another palace (here we go again, I hear you sigh) - this time it's Belvedere, another of the Kaiser's summer homes. It's now an art gallery, home to Gustav Klimt's 'The Kiss', prints of which can be bought on tea towels, mugs, umbrellas and fridge magnets in any souvenir shop within a mile radius.

You've been spared a plethora of photos from inside, because we weren't allowed to take our cameras in. It's a shame, because you're missing out on a particularly dashing portrait of Napoleon, who's been made to look like a Heathcliff/Rochester hybrid. Not complaining.

(NB: boyfriend wants you to know that he finds the concept of fancying a portrait of Napoleon utterly ridiculous).

Walking through the gardens from Oberes Belvedere (or the huge, grand Upper Palace) to Unteres Belvedere (the slightly more modest Lower Palace). Belvedere is right in the middle of the city, so it's surrounded on all sides by ordinary buildings and offices etc, but the gardens still feel very tranquil and calm.

Unteres or Lower Belvedere. This is where the modern art lives, being looked after by the nicest cloakroom attendant I met on the whole trip: praise indeed. The 'Vienna-Berlin' exhibition was on while we were visiting (and runs until June 15th this year, so you've still got time to catch it if you happen to be in Vienna soon). 'The Art of Two Cities' showcases some of the most important 20th Century artworks of the German-speaking world, and is well worth a visit to see pieces by the likes of Conrad Felixmüller and Hannah Höch.

Naschmarkt, Vienna's most famous food market. Boyf. and I met everyone here for lunch after Belvedere, and there were some good deals and excellent vegetable noodles to be had in the narrow, meandering alleys. Just don't point out that a few of the traders are trying to rip off unsuspecting foreigners, because you'll be pursued through several stalls with indignant shouts of "TOURRRRRRRISTEN!" ringing in your ears.

Horses and carriages outside the cathedral, Stephansdom, perhaps for a richer and more refined type of tourist than us.

Looking down a narrow sidestreet near the Mozartshaus, just off Stephansplatz, in the first picture. The second shows a stark contrast between tiny sidestreets like this and the huge open squares: old and new showcased side by side in Stephansplatz, the heart of Vienna.

For a capital city, particularly one with the historical and cultural importance of Vienna, I thought it was a very relaxed place. Of course it was busy, but in the sense that there were a lot of people, rather than that we felt rushed or hassled. It's a vibrant, lively place, but we never once felt unsafe.

Inside the stunning Stephansdom. Visiting this and the square outside was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, so much so that I had to come back for a quick visit before we returned home.

It's also one of a number of things you can do in Vienna for free (although it costs a little to walk down the central knave, but you can go inside the cathedral to see the beautiful ceiling and stone carvings without paying a cent). Visiting the parks and the Rathaus, or the city hall, are other free activities. The city hall doubles up as the tourist information centre, and you're perfectly able to explore the halls and courtyards as you wish.

Outside the entrance to the Hofburg, yet another palace, this time in the very centre of the city. It houses the world-famous Spanish Riding School and a vast array of different museums, including Sisi's Museum, named after the Kaiserin Elisabeth, the longest-reigning Austrian monarch, who was on the throne for forty-four years.

The style of the place felt similar to Horse Guards Parade, with its inner courtyard reached through archways, although the Hofburg has two. On the other side of the palace, though, you emerge onto the Ringstraße, one of the main roads in the centre of Vienna, around which are situated lots of the most famous and beautiful tourist attractions, like the Kunsthistorisches Museum (the Art History museum), the Rathaus and the Parliament buildings.

The Kaiser's state apartments inside the Hofburg: we spent a leisurely hour out here in the courtyard having ice cream and yet more coffee. At home in Angleterre, I basically chain-drink tea and I'm sorry to say that, in lieu of PG Tips, I tried to do the same thing with coffee in Austria. It was a steep learning curve.

As an aside, do go and get an ice cream sundae from the little Hofburg cafe, they really are beautiful.

Waiting to go into Hotel Sacher for our Sachertorte! If you're going to Vienna, this chocolate cake is on the list of food and drink that you absolutely must try, along with probably Wiener Schnitzel, Kaiserschmarrn and Apfelstrudel. Actually, I've still not ticked Kaiserschmarrn off my list, so I'll definitely have to do that when I return to Wien (as it's definitely a case of 'when', not 'if').

In spite of my self-proclaimed vegetarianism, I must confess that I did actually have meat on all three of our nights in Austria. Before you shout at me, in my defence, it is pretty hard to be completely veggie in Germany and Austria. A couple of our group managed it, with boyf (no, I'm not allowed to say his name on the internet) opting for some unusual-looking 'eggy dumplings' on the second night. But I went all-out Viennese and had Schnitzel on the nights either side of Sausage Night, which really was a sight to behold.

The Sachertorte was worth every cent, by the way.

Graben, in central Vienna. This is where a lot of the posh shops live - Gucci, Prada and Dior were all nearby, as well as Cartier, the Queen's favourite jeweller. Sadly, by the time I'd got here, I had spent most of my holiday money so I didn't get my diamond tiara this time. The beautiful gold monument on the left is called the Pestsäule, or Plague Column.

A view over Vienna from the famous Ferris wheel at Wiener Prater, a permanent fairground to the east of the city. 

And there's the wheel itself, the Wiener Riesenrad, which is over a century old and famously starred in 'The Third Man' with Orson Welles. It was also built by an engineer from Devon, so ten points to us. (Sadly, it was North Devon, but I won't tell if you don't.)

Another lovely, shiny U-Bahn station, complete with fairground-themed mural. We couldn't believe how clean everything was - that was actually the thing that most impressed my grandparents when they had to sit through a forty-five minute slideshow of all my snaps. Apparently even a cathedral and a few palaces aren't as exciting as a well-polished station floor.

In all seriousness, though, the entire city centre is so well maintained; everything was clean and shiny, or in the process of being made so, like the Stephansdom, which looked to be undergoing a major spring cleaning operation. It's quite a rare thing, I think, to go to a city that's such a major tourist destination and come away thinking how well looked-after it looks. I think I could live here quite happily, and I don't say that easily about big urban centres.

Even higher up than the Prater wheel this time! This is from the viewing platform on the Donauturm, or the TV tower. We visited its revolving cafe and enjoyed ice cream and coffee at a lofty 529 ft. Proud girlfriend moment: boyfriend buying the tickets to go up the tower, plus asking for the bill in the cafe, both entirely in German, despite being a self-confessed monoglot. It did take twenty minutes to get our head around 'Entschuldigen Sie...', but we got there! The big plus is that he's been inspired to buy a German book to learn some more for when he visits me in Tübingen next year.

Looking up through the bars towards the exciting revolving bits of the Donauturm. It was only up here on our last day that I eventually gave in to all 80s new wave-related urges and decided to have a chorus of  'IT MEANS NOTHING TO MEEEE' atop the tower. (Link for your viewing pleasure).

A view of the UN buildings from the Donauturm viewing platform. The tower itself is set in this beautiful green park, in which we spotted Luke Skywalker and the Emperor, or at least their lookalikes, all dressed up and taking a Friday afternoon stroll.

As you do in Vienna, natürlich.

If you're interested in taking your own trip to Austria's capital, and I really do recommend it, there's loads of tourist information here. We were busy everyday and saw so many exciting and interesting things, but  there's so much more that we just didn't have time to do - but we'll have lots to entertain ourselves with on our next visit, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

Zelda Fitzgerald and her husband’s leading ladies

I've recently become part of the regular feature-writing team for Exeposé Books, which is very exciting! Here's one of my first two 'audition pieces', as like to call them.

With the recent release of Baz Luhrmann’s unspeakably glitzy take on The Great Gatsby, the unreachable Daisy Buchananfeels like a familiar character. But the rest of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novels are studded with complicated female stars too. Brilliant yet flawed, each draws her inspiration from one source, tragically close to the author’s heart – ‘a vivacious blond who had hoards of suitors’ – Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda.

In Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, Gloria Patch is restricted by a role which would not have been unfamiliar to a woman of Zelda’s status.  As the wife of the heir to a phenomenal fortune, she has already achieved her sole aim in life: to snare a rich husband. Her subsequent, dangerous lack of occupation is questioned in the novel. Once Gloria has fulfilled her quest to marry into money, her life becomes empty and the only path open to her, at least in her mind, is the descent into alcoholism and idleness. Sadly, Fitzgerald saw this phenomenon of the rich and reckless in his own life, and particularly in Zelda. Gloria clearly shares his wife’s tendency towards reckless, irresponsible and selfish behaviour; the portrayal of the Patches’ idle lives evokesFitzgerald’s concern that, in the early years of the 1920s, their own lives were growing dangerously close to becoming a circus of bingeing and self-indulgence.

Perhaps the character who draws most on Zelda for inspiration is Nicole Diver of Tender is the Night, the last completed novel that Fitzgerald would write. Again, her only apparent vocation is to be one half of a rich and glamorous couple, but, like Zelda in reality, she is of course much more complex. In the novel, Nicole is admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland with acute neurosis, where her future husband Dick is a psychoanalyst. It is clear that Fitzgerald is directly referring to one of Zelda's many admittances to sanatoria, where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. During her stay at one institution, Zelda wrote her first and only published novel, a semi-autobiography, Save Me the Waltz. Although Scott was incensed that she had published such personal material, he would do exactly that with Tender Is the Night, even lifting extracts directly from Zelda’s own diary and letters she had written to him from the psychiatric ward. In spite of their challenging conditions, both Nicole and Zelda desired a career and independence from their husbands. For Nicole, this took the form of psychiatry; meanwhile, as the vivid, moving prose of Save Me the Waltz suggests, Zelda desired recognition of her own writing.

Each of Fitzgerald’s leading ladies is a reflection of his life with Zelda in some way, be it in the portrayal of her fragile mental state or of the hollow, frivolous lifestyle they shared. But most readers are of the opinion that none of his characters manage to capture her vivacity or her enormous complexity. There are naturally glimpses of her in her own novel, but as her husband forbade her to publish anything more and she never completed her second novel after his death, it seems unlikely that we can ever know or comprehend the real Zelda Fitzgerald.

The mad, bad and probably most intriguing family of the 20th Century -the Mitford sisters in writing and popular culture.

This is the second of my two pieces for Exeposé Books. It's a re-jig of a piece I had already written on the Mitford sisters (yes, them again), but they're some of my favourite people to read and write about and so I hope you'll forgive me for bringing them up again! 

For those who don't spend their time with their nose in endless books about the inconceivably crazy antics of minor aristocrats (who doesn't?), the Mitfords were a family whose lives were full of outrageous coincidences. Their story would be thought of as highly unrealistic at the very least; the Mitfords' parents, by some act of fate, missed their journey on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and their fifth child, the infamous Nazi-lover Unity, was conceived in a Canadian town called Swastika - and given the middle name Valkyrie. Add into the mix their family connections to Winston Churchill as well as the current Royal Family, and they could be the creation of an over-zealous writer.

There were seven Mitford children in all, including a brother, Tom, who was sadly consigned to obscurity, despite his scandalous schooldays at Eton. It would be Tom's six sisters - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah - who would go down in history, or perhaps in infamy.

The latest work about this strange sextet is Lyndsy Spence’s The Mitford Girls’ Guide to Life, published in August 2013. In the midst of such a wealth of existing writing about and by the sisters, Spence is challenged with creating an original and entertaining version of their story. Her idea of portraying theMitfords’ lives through a guide to English high society in the middle years of the twentieth century, is a fun and novel one, and we learn how the girls might  have coped with modern life. Pamela's guide to throwing a jubilee party, Nancy's guide to fashion or Diana's tips on how to stay young all feature in this endearing compendium. It’s far from a laborious, detailed biography, but this was always supposed to be a clean, informal glance at the Mitfords’ lives.

Aside from Unity, who died in 1948 after earlier attempting suicide in a Munich park at the outbreak of the Second World War, each of the sisters has published her memoirs. Jessica’sHons and Rebels and Deborah’s Wait For Me are two of the most loved by the ever-growing number of twenty-first century Mitford fans. Meanwhile, Nancy is best remembered for her novels Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love.

It was in contemporary British popular culture, though, that the elder sisters would first find fame with their well-known friends, the earliest set of Bright Young People. Rushing around London, falling into and out of the most over-the-top fancy dress parties, cocktails in hand, the young inter-war generation lived fast and partied hard. After Evelyn Waugh, author of Brideshead Revisited and observer of these wild antics, separated from his wife, he became obsessed with Diana and even dedicated his novel Vile Bodies to her. The novel went on to be adapted by Stephen Fry into the film Bright Young Things in 2003.

In spite of their polarising reputations  and decadent lifestyles, in her 2001 biography The Mitford Girls – The Biography of An Extraordinary Family, biographer Mary S Lovell is at pains to emphasise that the women always stuck together.  Despite a wide age gap - Nancy, the eldest, was sixteen when her youngest sister Debo was born - they remained close throughout their lives, perhaps even more so in adulthood than they had been as children. An abridged and condensed collection of their vast number of letters was edited by Diana’s daughter-in-law Charlotte Mosley –Letters Between Six Sisters is a hefty volume, but it captures a version of the women very rarely glimpsed, even in their memoirs. Their letters portray an obvious love of life and vivacious nature which would characterise them as much as their infamous deeds.

Perhaps the reason that many are still so absorbed in the sisters' unique stories – even after the publication of innumerable biographies, memoirs and homages such as Spence’s – is that the Mitfords were such vibrant, interesting people. Yes, they were hugely flawed, of course; what with their associations with the far-right and some certainly questionable morals, they were not exactly salubrious company. But every biographer appears so in awe of them and portrays each of their lives in such a way that it is impossible to avoid being swept along with them, through the débutantedances, the summer tours of Europe, the wild parties of inter-war London. Maybe it is because their lives are so incomprehensible and far-moved from our own that generation after generation is drawn to their fantastical stories.

Art Deco Under The Sun: Vintage Decadence At Burgh Island Hotel

Perched on a tiny island off the coast of South Devon and cut off from the mainland at high tide, the Burgh Island Hotel is more than a gem of Art Deco architecture; it's a symbol of the sumptuous inter-war life enjoyed by such names as Wallis Simpson, Noël Coward and Agatha Christie, who would base two of her famous murder mysteries on the island after staying at the luxury hotel.

Under its first guise, the hotel was little more than a wooden hut built in the image of a Swiss chalet at the turn of the century by a music hall star of questionable taste (George H Chirgwin's most famed act was that of a blacked-up minstrel). In 1927 the island was sold and the infinitely grander Art Deco structure was realised - according to Tony Porter, who helped to restore the hotel to its former glory in the 1980s - after a local architect was commissioned to build a 'great white palace'. 

It would remain a fixture in the social lives of many Bright Young Things escaping the hubbub of London for a weekend in Devon throughout the 1930s. Reached at high-tide by a purpose-built sea-tractor (a descendent of which still operates today) and dubbed the 'smartest hotel west of the Ritz', an invitation to Burgh Island was considered the most prestigious invitation to receive, darling. Throughout these golden years it would see many hundreds of parties, with flapper girls dancing in the grand Ballroom and cocktails flowing in the Ganges Restaurant until the early hours - Harry Roy and his band even performed the Charleston from a floodlit stage which floated in the middle of the seawater rock pool. A man who had been a holidaymaker at a nearby town in his youth would later tell how his parents had forbidden him to venture onto the island as its reputation was considered too 'racy'.

But by the end of the decade, war had reached Britain and had even cast its shadow as far as Burgh Island; the first sign of the changing times was the destruction of the popular Jacob's ladder, which featured in Agatha Christie's 'Evil Under the Sun' and by which visitors could reach one of the loveliest beaches via a steep cliff-face, because it was feared that German troops might use it to stage a secret landing and thus be able to reach the mainland. The glamorous, carefree guests left the hotel and the public was barred from the island as the army took it over: officers were billeted at the hotel itself, while their men moved into the music-hall star's wooden Swiss-style chalet; anti-tank scaffolding traps were set in the sandy causeway between the island and mainland Devon. During the war, the hotel was used as a convalescence centre for wounded RAF pilots and in 1942, it was bombed, destroying the two uppermost floors of the beautiful Art Deco structure. 

The 'great white palace' continued to suffer even in peacetime - in 1948, it was purchased once more and rebuilt to the original design. But thereafter, it was passed from pillar to post and was eventually driven into bankruptcy in 1955. It had, though, become famous once again in the interlude, but for all the wrong reasons. A particularly feckless manager had set about recreating the decadent, luxurious reputation that the hotel had had before the war, advertising in Tatler and Punch; he handed out free cigars and cocktails to guests and, instead of washing up crockery and cutlery, it was simply thrown away, wracking up enormous debts. 

For the next few decades, the hotel's fate seemed to be sealed and its glory days long gone. Successive owners ripped the original structure apart, converting it into self-catering flats, which were advertised on the building's own façade in fluorescent paint, defacing the delicate mint-green and white colour scheme. One particularly shocking plan was to carve up the hotel into timeshare apartments, knocking out the original French windows to replace them with double-glazing and demolishing the once-radiant Sun Lounge to make way for a brand-spanking-new swimming pool. Burgh Island's former residents and locals alike were horrified and, thankfully, the company's endeavours transpired to be an extortionately expensive failure.

Now the ruined shell of what had been a luxurious hotel and an exquisite example of vintage architecture lay abandoned on its island. But, after so many years of being mistreated and manhandled by a succession of perhaps well-meaning but hapless owners, things would soon look up for Burgh Island. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the island and its hotel were restored to the height of their glamour and glory by the aforementioned Tony Porter and his wife Beatrice, (and who incidentally founded London Fashion Week and spent time working for Biba, a London fashion house and a style staple during the '60s and '70s). Tony documents the arduous journey of the hotel's renovation in his book, which takes its title from the building's nickname, 'The Great White Palace'.

Today, the Burgh Island Hotel has had yet another set of owners since 2006, but they have continued to restore this magical place in a loving manner and one that is sensitive to the original design. The hotel's unique style now once more draws visitors from far and wide to enjoy a Devon cream tea or even, if one visits for one of the frequently-held jazz shows held in the grand Ballroom, a cheeky cocktail! Vintage-style murder mystery parties and decadent balls also feature on the social calendar as they once would have done in Noël Coward's day - and he enjoyed these events so much that, although he only intended to stay for three nights, he remained at the hotel for three weeks.

When one takes in the incredible elegance of Burgh Island, it isn't difficult to see why Mr Coward found it so hard to leave. After the years of hard work put into the place, it is again worthy of the rich and famous of days gone by and is still enjoyed by those who seek an opportunity to turn back time and soak up the vintage glamour.