In Brenners, Germany’s grandest grand hotel, in Baden-Baden, Germany’s smartest spa town, there’s a corner of a foreign drawing room that is forever England. Above the fireplace hangs a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the Honourable Mrs Beresford – a quintessential English Rose in a quintessential German Kaminhalle. At first sight it seems incongruous but in fact it’s rather fitting, for this hotel and this spa town epitomises the close relationship between the British and German upper classes, a relationship only slightly sullied by the awkward happenstance of two world wars.
Brenners has always been a home from home for the British aristocracy: its guest book boasts the signatures of Edward VII, Edward VIII and the late lamented Duke of Edinburgh. The hotel was founded in 1872, a year after Germany became a nation. One hundred and fifty years later, it still feels like a strange hybrid of Germanic Schloss and English Stately Home.
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