Who wants to buy our old office?

‘A unique opportunity to purchase the home of a famous weekly magazine.’ Thus might an estate agent market No. 56 Doughty Street, London WC1, now up for sale after more than 30 years as the offices of The Spectator. But an estate agent cannot know how des a res is this early-19th-century house in Bloomsbury. It should be sold not so much for its fabric — handsome as it is, if slightly worn — as for its recent history, for the rich variety of people who have passed through its doors and the voices which may come out of the now possibly rotting woodwork. As someone associated with The Spectator for most of its time in Doughty Street, I offer an insider’s guide for prospective buyers, confident that the building will be bought, whether for a business enterprise or to return it to private use (for which listed-building consent has been given), by a discerning Spectator reader.