Ep 03 West End Glamor & East End Skullduggery at The Star Tavern, Belgravia

The Star Tavern in Belgravia has a colorful history due the the patrons said to be a blend of "West End glamor and East End skullduggery".  Join me for a pint and all all the details

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Google map with pubs covered in previous episodes pinned, courtesy of Andy Meddick:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/4/edit?mid=12c-WKa3XiT1qTLydK8psZocUR7Y_Wes&usp=sharing

Or TinyURL: https://tinyurl.com/bduca5dv

The following resources are quoted frequently in these episodes:

• Ted Bruning  -- Historic Pubs of London (ISBN 978-0658005022) and London By Pub (ISBN 978-0658005022)
• Wikipedia
• https://londonspubswherehistoryreallyhappened.wordpress.com/  by Ann

Intro music:

Vivaldi - Spring Allegro by John Harrison with the Wichita State University Chamber

Photo: Pa_Nick

Website: https://historiclondonpubcast.com/

E-mail: hosteric@historiclondonpubcast.com

Transcript

Welcome to this episode of The Historic London Pubcast.I'm Eric Blair, and I'd like to take you on a journey through the rich history of London's iconic pubs. My goal is to share with you my passion for the great old pubs of London. I want to give you some facts to help you appreciate the history of these hallowed establishments, mixed in with some fun stories that make it all go down as smooth as a well poured pint.

Today, let's talk about The Star Tavern in the section of London known as Belgravia. The pub has it all - history, style, location, the works! Before we enter the pub, though, look around. We're in Belgravia. This is a very ritzy area, and it's been that way for some time. Much of this land was originally owned by the Grosvenor family, going back a thousand years. 

In the 1820s Robert Grosvenor, the first Marquess of Westminster, started the development of the land that became known as The Grosvenor Estate. While other parts of the estate have been sold off over the years, the part known as Belgravia is still largely owned by Grosvenor. Family interest. The Grosvenor website tells us Belgravia became one of the capital's most desirable and eclectic residential addresses, becoming a magnet for some of the leading exponents of the worlds of politics, science, the arts, as well as a preferred location for many embassies and institutions.

Until about ten years ago, the US embassy was located at Grosvenor Square, and many other countries still have their embassies in the area. Just walking around some of the residential streets, you see a lot of really nice rolling stock. So, let's pretend you are flush with dough living the life in old Belgravia in the 1800s. Nice, huh? But you still have problems like,

“Where can my servants go when they get off work and want to take in a pub?’

One of the answers is The Star Tavern,but it is more complex than that. The Star was originally designed to accommodate the class stratified nation of the working class. Ted Bruning, in his book Historic Pubs of London, does a good job of describing the class-conscious architectural plan on which The Star was built, 

“The ground floor of the pub was originally divided into at least three rooms. The main entrance opens onto a public bar, which may at some time have been subdivided by partitions around the horseshoe bar counter. Here one can imagine grooms and footmen assembling on their rare days off. Off to the left is an elegant saloon with its own fireplace, where valets and butlers might for gather. But penetrate this room, and at the back of the pub you would have found yourself in the true inner sanctum, where only the butlers of the very grandest houses would have congregated snubbing any lesser mortals who presume to enter. Domestic service was, before the First World War, the single largest employer in the country, and represented one of the few chances of social advancement for the working people. In the status obsessed Victorian world, the difference between a harassed skivvy of a small shopkeeper and the butler of one of the great houses of Belgrave Square was a gulf as great as that which divided their respective employers.”

But Ted does not leave us trapped in the social class maze. He wraps up with this pithy conclusion, 

“All the rooms and bars on the first floor were knocked into two at some point after the Second World War, and the rigid social categorization of earlier days went with them.”

Thank you, Mr. Bruning. Today's Star is a very inviting place, with a fire in the room to the left of the bar on a cold day. The rich wooden tone tells you that this is the place where you can relax for a while. Upstairs is a bar and bookcases on the wall around comfy couches. None of the social class snobbery of the past remains. All are welcome here. 

Unlike most historic pubs, I talk about, I was not able to find a specific date the pub was built, but we know that it was a part of the development of the area, so it must have been around 1820 to 1840 or 50. It's safe to say that it's old enough to earn the adjective historic. 

If I had to choose one outstanding feature of The Star, it would be the personalities associated with the pub. All these characters are from relatively modern times, pretty much after World War Two. Celebrities famous and infamous and several larger-than-life characters, all with different stories.

Let me start with Mr. Peter Scott. This guy has a longer Wikipedia article than most of us could hope for. Here are some of the highlights, 

“Born in Northern Ireland, he was a burglar and a thief who was variously described as the king of the cat, burglars and burglar to the stars, and the human fly. Scott began his life of crime in his teens, targeting wealthy homes around Belfast. By the time he was caught by police in 1952, Scott estimated he had committed 150 burglaries. He only served six months later, claiming that the police only charged him with 12 burglaries because they were embarrassed at the scale of his exploits. He then moved to London while working as a bouncer in a pub., he burgled houses in the evening. In prison in 1957, Scott met George Taylors Chatham, then renowned as the most celebrated cat burglar in London. Working together, Scott and Chatham, both regular patrons of The Star, formed a criminal partnership that would net them many millions of pounds worth of art and jewelry following their successful targeting of furriers and jewelry boutiques on Bond Street and art collectors in Mayfair.”

Peter and Taylors were hard working men, and why not grab a pint at what was long ago built to be a working man's pub? The Star Tavern.And that's what they did often. Now back to robbing. According to Scott, notable victims of his burglaries included famous performers such as Lauren Bacall, Maria Callas, Judy Garland, Georgia Gabor, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Also, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Another of Scott's claimed burglaries was of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, a crime that he claimed was covered up by the government to avoid embarrassment. Scott described himself as having been sent by God to take back some of the wealth the outrageously rich have taken from the rest of us.

When Scott cased one of his targets and saw the well-heeled guests sitting down to dinner, he likened himself to, 

“A missionary seeing his flock for the first time. I decided these people were my life's work”.

 Often Scott would identify victims by reading the society columns in the papers. I guess that shows that there is such a thing as bad press.

He purchased a new suit before each job, so his presence would not be betrayed by his appearance. Disturbed during one burglary by a titled lady who appeared at the top of the stairs, Scott shouted to her, 

“Everything's all right, Ma'am.”

And she went off to bed thinking he was a butler. If Scott was disturbed on other occasions, he would reassuringly shout, 

“It's only me!”

In 1960, Scott stole a 200,000 pound necklace from actress Sophia Loren. The theft from Sophia was described at the time as Britain's biggest jewelry theft, but Scott netted just 30,000 pounds from a fence for the necklace. Supposedly, a day or so after Scott bellied up to the bar at The Star and pulled out a wad of cash and remarked, 

“I hear poor Sophia has been robbed.”

Sophia Loren later saw him on television, and her companions heard her tell Scott's image on the screen that she, 

“Came from a long line of gypsies. You will have no luck.” 

The hex that Sophia put on him seemed to work. Scott subsequently lost every penny of that robbery, and others gambling and con from his initial term in the late 1950s.

Scott spent increasing periods of time in prison, having been jailed for three years in 1961, five in 1964, and a further four years in 1985. This continued into later life as well, although he claimed to have retired from his life of crime in the mid-1990s. Scott was jailed for three and a half years for handling stolen goods in 1998.

He did love the notoriety of all of it, all. In 1965, a movie was made about Scott's exploits, but at the time of the film's release, Scott was in prison and profited little from it. In 1995, Scott published a memoir, Gentleman Thief. He was a participant in the 2004 BBC program The Heist, in which stage robberies were carried out.

Scott was also the subject of an award-winning short documentary, My Friend the Thief. He died in 2013 and accomplished his final heist. Scott was declared bankrupt at the end of his life, owing more than 400,000 pounds to creditors. He was living on state benefits of 60 pounds per week in public housing at the time of his death.

Okay, now here's the thing. When I was researching all of this, I realized that when you compare the list of famous Star patrons and the list of Peter Scott victims, at least one name appears on both lists. And given Peter's long career and the star's popularity with the rich and famous, I bet there were others. But back to that.

No name. It's the actress Elizabeth Taylor. She could have been drinking in The Star with Peter, her burglar. Now here's my fantasy. They make a slightly fictionalized miniseries on all of this where one scene filmed in The Star. Peter buys Liz a beer with the proceeds of the jewelry he stole from her. Now that’s must see TV for us pub fans!

Liz Taylor is also linked to another interesting Star character, Paddy Kennedy. He was described as a hard-bitten gambler who took over running the star in the 50s and 60s. He was known for indiscriminately swearing at customers and refusing to serve anyone he didn't like the look of. He once told Liz to,

“Get your fat ass off that stool, and let my friends sit down”.

Paddy's management style seemed to attract both the celebs and the bad boys, like our friends Peter and Taylors. The pub was said to be a blend of West End glamor and East End skullduggery. The most famous bit of skullduggery, however, was not done by famous burglars. It was a much bigger heist. The 1963 Great Train Robbery. This robbery was a 15 strong gang that hijacked a mail train and netted 2.6 million pounds. That would be worth over ten times that amount in today's currency. And the whole thing was planned. Guess where you got it? Right at The Star Tavern, specifically in the upstairs bar. The mastermind of the caper was a bloke named Bruce Reynolds, a buddy of Paddy's. It was a well-planned event involving changing the train, signaling. So, it had to stop in the middle of nowhere, about 50 miles northwest of London.

Then driving the train to a point where the loot could be unloaded. Although this was just the regular Glasgow to London Royal Mail train, it did have more than just letters from grandma on the second carriage behind the engine that was known as the HVP. The High Value Packages coach, which carried large amounts of money and registered mail for sorting.

Usually, the value of the shipment was in the region of 300,000 pounds. But because the previous weekend had been a UK bank holiday, the total on the day of the robbery was almost 3 million. After the robbery, the gang hit it at a farm about a half hour away that they had previously planned to use. They split the loot there and then dispersed.

But eventually the police found this hideout and incriminating evidence led to the arrest and conviction of most of the gang. The ringleaders were sentenced to 30 years in prison, but the bulk of the stolen money was never recovered. Now, if this were an infomercial on The Star's sordid history, here would be the part where the announcer would enthusiastically say, 

“But wait, there's more!”

And that more is the Profumo Affair. Not robbery. This bit is about spies and a sex scandal. The story starts with a young girl named Christine Keeler, 19 years old, who had a tough childhood and found herself working in a Soho club as a topless server. Christine later wrote in her defense that it, 

“Was a look, but don't touch place”.

A customer that she got to know was a doctor named Stephen Ward. Ward moved in many circles, and through him Christine met, and in 1961 began an affair with Eugeny Ivanov,  a married 35-year-old, ‘Naval Attaché’ at the Soviet Embassy. It subsequently came out that British intelligence knew he was a spy, and actually had tried to recruit him to be a double agent.

With no success, Christine affair with Ivanov was not much of a threat to British national security. But later that year Christine met John Profumo, an up-and-coming Conservative Party Member of Parliament or MP at the time. He was married at 46 years old, and held the position of Secretary of State for War. Christine and Profumo had an affair, a rather intense one, using The Star frequently as their rendezvous point.

But it was over before a year in 1961. The following year, a domestic violence incident led to the police doing extensive interviews with Christine, and it came out that she had affairs with both Profumo and Ivanov. This caused quite a stir, and Profumo was called to answer. He publicly denied the accusation and it appeared that the whole thing would just blow over.

But just like The Great Fire of London, it flared up again with vengeance. Profumo came clean in June of 1963 and resigned. Ivanov was recalled to Moscow and the Conservative Party was tarred and feathered in the press. It tarnished their image so badly that in the October 1963 election, the Conservative Party was voted out in favor of the Labor Party.

So, the Profumo Affair is often described as a scandal that brought down the government. But look on the bright side. It furthered The Stars image as a place with an interesting clientele. I've heard it said that in Britain, the Labor Party scandals are always about money, and the Conservative Party scandals are always about sex. The Profumo Affair is one data point that supports that.

The Star is a Fuller's pub. I talked a bit about that company for Smith and Turner in the Pubcast episode covering The Lamb and Flag. Here I would like to say a few words about one of their most famous beers, Fuller's London Pride. First. Let's start with the beer's name, London Pride. During the Blitz in World War two, when London was being bombed almost every night, the citizens began to notice a small flower that would crop up in the craters a few days after a bomb fell. It has a Latin name that I would like to avoid pronouncing, but the common name the Londoners gave it was London Pride. Songwriter Noel Coward even wrote a patriotic song in 1941 that mentions London Pride. Fullers came up with this beer in 1958, and it became known for its balance of malt and hops and overall well-rounded flavor. It continues to be a very popular beer, and it's won several impressive awards. London Pride has twice won the Champion Beer in its class award, given by the Beer Aficionados Group CAMRA or The Campaign for Real Ale. All the London Pride beer served in the UK is brewed at the historic Griffin Brewery, although that is part of the brewing business that is now owned by Asahi.

The bottom line is it's a great beer and I'm always happy to have a pint poured. And speaking of CAMRA, now is a good time to talk about CAMRA’s high regard for The Star. CAMRA, again, that’s short for The Campaign for Real Ale is a group of beer and pub lovers that promote quality in that area. They have around 150,000 members, so they are a serious organization.

CAMRAhas been around for about 50 years and over that time has published something like 45 editions of its Good Beer Guide. Pubs from all over the UK are nominated, and it's an honor to appear in it. Only two London pubs have appeared in every edition, and one is The Star Tavern. This is quite an achievement and shows that Fullers and The Star are dedicated to maintaining their quality for the long term.

With that happy note, we've come to the end of this pubcast episode. Remember The Star Tavern on your next visit to London? I hope the talk today will enhance your enjoyment of this great pub as much as a second pint of Fuller's London Pride. Cheers!