The Steeple Times

Tag: Germany

  • Letters – Berkoff & Brenda

    Letters – Berkoff & Brenda

    Actor and producer Steven Berkoff suggests Her Majesty The Queen should open up Buckingham Palace to survivors of last week’s Grenfell Tower tragedy

     

    Sir

     

    In these grim times, when the shadow of death is stalking us with bitter regularity, an opportunity presents itself for our beloved Queen to actually do some real service for her tragically wounded people. I think of the survivors from that ghastly tower block fire in Kensington. As per usual, the nation’s wounds have her trolling about, nodding sympathetically as she listens with a furrowed brow, or stands stoutly at attention for a minute’s silence. Then back in the limo to Buckingham Palace.

     

    Then it is left to the goofs and goons of local councils to get swiftly to work and rehouse the pathetic victims. This they seem to do with such ineptitude that it beggars belief. Sending some unfortunate hundreds of miles to distant Northern cities. What an insult to injury.

     

    Now, dear Queen, who we all love dearly (although sadly that love has been waning somewhat). Rather than just be a lump of royal flesh being carted around the country and do little more than give the usual and slightly over familiar kindly looks and nods along with the odd moue, do something that really helps those wounded people. Offer them the sanctuary of Buckingham Palace!

     

    I know that will be a hard call, a very hard call but the outcome would be worldwide recognition that our Royal Family really has soul and you will redeem The Monarchy and most of all your good self for centuries to come. Buck House has seven hundred and seventy five rooms including one hundred and eighty eight staff bedrooms.

     

    Even if you took in only a hundred that would ease the burden enormously and what a magnificent gesture it would be, in fact it would endear you to us all till kingdom come. You have the space and you certainly are not short of the pennies for such a modest gesture.

     

    Modest financially but colossal spiritually.

     

    So lend an ear though I know full well that this might be I nigh on impossible gesture for you to make, so perhaps your enlightened grandchildren can gently persuade you. I know it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime. But do try.

     

    A saintly gesture is what our nation desperately needs right now. And you do have the space.

     

    Respectfully

     

    Steven Berkoff

    London, E14

     

  • Empire State of Knightsbridge

    Empire State of Knightsbridge

    Penthouse with tower in prominent Knightsbridge landmark for sale for £8.25 million

     

    A penthouse with a tower in a Grade II listed landmark triangular ‘flat-iron’ building on the border of South Kensington and Knightsbridge has gone on sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million).

     

    Created in 1991 to designs by Susan Walker Architects and involving the clever merger of two fourth floor flats as part of a £1.70 million scheme (the equivalent of £3.35 million, $4.27 million, €3.81 million or درهم15.68 million today), the 3,475 square foot apartment offered overlooks the Brompton Oratory and has a vista down the Brompton Road towards Harrods. It is within a building known as Empire House that was itself built between 1909 and 1916 to designs by Paul Hoffmann and was originally used by a German firm, the Continental Tyre Company.

     

    Currently featuring a large reception room, a dining kitchen, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a laundry on the building’s fourth floor, a tower with domed reception space from the sixth to the seventh floors and a private roof terrace on its fifth floor, the apartment comes with planning permission for internal rearrangement.

     

    Held on a leasehold basis expiring 2142 and subject to a service charge of £20,550 per annum ($26,187, €23,391 or درهم96,211 per annum) according to agents JLL, a buyer will also have to pay a one-off charge of £12,054 ($15,360, €13,720 or درهم56,434) towards the cost of refurbishing the portered building’s lift.

     

    Empire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLL Empire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLL Empire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLL Empire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLL Empire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLLEmpire State of Knightsbridge – The Penthouse, Empire House, 220 – 244 Brompton Road and 2 – 7 Thurloe Place, Brompton Quarter, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RU, United Kingdom – For sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million) through JLL

  • Lady Ridsdale DBE (1921 – 2009, née Victoire Bennett)

    Lady Ridsdale DBE (1921 – 2009, née Victoire Bennett)

    Dame Paddy Ridsdale, as she generally known, was an intelligence operative, secretary to Ian Fleming during WW2 and the inspiration for the Bond character Miss Moneypenny.

     

    A Conservative Party stalwart and married to Member of Parliament for Harwich from 1954 to 1992 Sir Julian Ridsdale CBE (1915 – 2004), Dame Paddy – or Vicky, as she was known to some – is best known for her role in ‘Operation Mincemeat’, a “famous caper” concerning a “man who never was” in 1943.

     

    In the war, Dame Paddy wrote love letters and telegrams that were planted on the body of ‘Major William Martin’, an invented, drowned naval officer, that was floated in the ocean off Spain. The body carried fictitious plans of a purported Allied invasion of Sardinia and Greece and formed part of a plot designed to deflect attention from the Allied landings in Sicily. Of it, she later remarked: “I was sent to buy clothes in all the best men’s shops and had to pose as his girlfriend. I had to go to post offices and rather loudly send this telegram to ‘my boyfriend’, hoping of course that somebody would overhear me”. In due course, the body was indeed found, the Axis powers completely taken in and “Mincemeat swallowed whole, hook, line, and sinker”. A BAFTA winning film directed by Ronald Neame, The Man Who Never Was, made about the deceptive scheme in 1956.

     

    Dame Paddy was known as a “political hostess in the style of a bygone era”, lived in a mansion “sandwiched between a sheikh and a Saudi prince” in The Boltons for the majority of her adult life and is buried in the grounds of the church there. She had one daughter, became Lady Ridsdale when her husband was knighted in 1981 and was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in her own right, for political services, in 1991.

     

    Of her relationship with her one-time employer Fleming, she concluded: “Ian had so many girlfriends that I was not tempted to become one of them”.

     

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xemGlAV6TAw

     

  • Martina Big

    Martina Big

    Born white in Bernkastel-Kues, Germany in 1989, but now perceived by many to be black, “pneumatic chested” Martina Big increased her cleavage to a 32S and “turned her pale skin a deep mahogany shade that draws stares from strangers everywhere she goes”. A former air hostess turned glamour model, Miss Big appeared on ITV1’s This Morning in April 2017 and alongside her equally tanned partner, Michael, curiously announced: “I love being an exotic Barbie”. On her website, this Katie Price fan goes further and proclaims: “My motto is ‘Big is not big enough!’”

     

    Martina Big – The name of this “mahogany skinned” German is a giveaway. Martina Big – The name of this “mahogany skinned” German is a giveaway.Martina Big – The name of this “mahogany skinned” German is a giveaway.

  • Sexing up Brexit

    Sexing up Brexit

    Defrocked priest appears outside the Supreme Court dancing a jig without any trousers; he believes Nigel Farage was “sent by Christ”

     

    This week, as the Supreme Court debated one of the most serious constitutional cases in history, a strange little man dressed as a leprechaun danced a jig whilst holding placards about Nigel Farage, a Third World War and Brexit.

     

    The strange, trouser-less pensioner’s banners bizarrely were captioned:

     

    “Nigel Farage was sent by Christ to get Britain out of Europe and fulfill [sic] Bible prophecy”.

     

    “Britain will fight for Israel in the Third World War whereas Europe will fight against Israel and against Christ”.

     

    Dubbed a “sex elf” in one tweet, The Huffington Post later suggested the man to be Neil Horan, “a defrocked Irish Catholic priest who has previously disrupted major events like the Grand Prix and the Olympics and appeared on Britain’s Got Talent”. Horan was given an ASBO for attempting to disrupt the London Marathon in 2007 and his published works number A Glorious New World Very Soon to Come and Christ Will Soon Take Power From All Governments.

     

    In 2006, Horan was held for two months in custody in Germany during the World Cup. He had announced that he had planned to carry posters that declared “Adolf Hitler was a good leader who was following the word of Christ”.

     

    You truly couldn’t make it up.

     

    Sexing up Brexit – Defrocked priest Neil Horan appears outside the Supreme Court dancing a jig without any trousers; he believes Nigel Farage was “sent by Christ”Sexing up Brexit – Defrocked priest Neil Horan appears outside the Supreme Court dancing a jig without any trousers; he believes Nigel Farage was “sent by Christ”

  • Lawrence Van Hagen

    Lawrence Van Hagen

    Art curator Lawrence Van HagenBig haired art curator and international jetsetter Lawrence Van Hagen is based in London and Paris. (more…)

  • A muscular Mercedes

    A muscular Mercedes

    Muscular 1990 Mercedes-Benz offered for sale for a higher price than when new (more…)

  • Bonded to a Rolls

    Bonded to a Rolls

    1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I drophead coupé owned by Bond set designer Sir Ken Adam to be auctioned at RM Sotheby’s Battersea sale tonight (more…)

  • Taking refuge with The Telegraph

    Taking refuge with The Telegraph

    Letter to ‘The Telegraph’ illustrates a sensible perspective on how England should behave towards “foreigners flying for refuge against oppression and tyranny” (more…)

  • Beaten by Bloomberg

    Beaten by Bloomberg

    Michael Bloomberg offers £2 million above the £15 million asking price to see off three other bidders and buys George Eliot’s house by the River Thames (more…)