Tatler UK

Anne McElvoy Columnist and broadcaster Anne McElvoy has seen it all, reporting on everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s and UK politics today. In this issue, her attention turns to Westminster and Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, for a major profile in which Anne deftly captures the secret world of the prime minister’s spouse, speaking to her friends, past employers and confidantes. Any pearls of wisdom for Britain’s First Lady? ‘The role is yours to redefine,’ says Anne. ‘A bit of fun never hurts, even in tough times. Enjoy it.’ Hubert Cecil As Tatler’s resident Bystander photographer, Hubert Cecil (left) knows a thing or two about capturing the action at parties. At Ascot last June, he found himself in the Royal Enclosure, photographing King…

It was the night that Tatler became Studio 54. In the dark corners and velvety booths of The Windmill Soho, hundreds of society’s brightest young things revelled in their beauty, brains and eligibility. They were there, of course, for Tatler’s Little Black Book Party in partnership with Michael Kors: an evening of glamour that saw future dukes canoodling with Instagram goddesses. Those who weren’t on the list were gripped with social anxiety (a flurry of socialites were left begging for invitations but the list was closed, they were told), as were the guests who turned up late on the night to see a queue snaking through the rain-drizzled streets of Soho. In it, the Marquess of Granby (‘I feel a bit uninvited,’ he wailed in mock distress) and Princess Margaret’s grandson…

You know you’re in the Cotswolds when Plum Sykes and Fiona Howden appear in a muddy field clad in cashmere and tortoiseshell sunglasses. It was the return of Cornbury House Horse Trials, which the Howdens revived after they moved into the house. Edie Campbell and William Fox-Pitt saddled up to compete, and David Howden recited Ronald Duncan’s poem The Horse. After Tom McEwen galloped to victory, Kitty Howden zoomed off into the sunset in the back of an electric Moke, and Alice Sykes said that the trials had ‘stamped their place on the social calendar once more’. The ultimate colt following.…

When the high priestess of philanthropy Batia Ofer throws a party, guests know to expect serious glamour. And The Art of Wishes Ladies Lunch – held at Wild by Tart in Belgravia – was pure charity couture. Fashion entrepreneur Belma Gaudio arrived wearing an eye-catching baroque skirt trimmed with gold tassels, while Cliveden’s chate-laine, Natalie Livingstone, turned heads in Saint Laurent. After lunch, auctioneer Cheyenne Westphal opened the bidding to the room (Mary McCartney’s limited-edition fashion print was the talk of the tables) and singer Sarina Haggarty serenaded everyone with what Ofer described as a ‘truly remarkable’ performance – almost as remarkable as the £9 million raised for the charity to date. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.…

IT’S SUNSET ON THE border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. A Fiat with a snapped exhaust inches along a dusty cliff road running 30 metres above a ravine. It takes four and a half hours to drive four kilometres. A rifle scope glints as a loaded gun is pointed at the driver. That gun is trained on Thea Lumley, fresh out of Heathfield and in the midst of the Mongol Rally: a 10,000-mile race from London to Mongolia in a jalopy, with just a compass to guide her. ‘I’d only passed my driving test two weeks before. It was a baptism of fire,’ she says. That didn’t deter Thea from careening into war zones with her friends in the back: Royal High School Bath alumna Mali Gravell and Old Etonians Hal Pitman and…

LAST SEPTEMBER, AMID the grief and grandeur of Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral in Westminster Abbey, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark sat immediately opposite the new King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort, and mourned the only European monarch to have reigned longer than her. Margrethe, 82, has been on the Danish throne for 50 years. That day in the abbey, she could almost touch her fellow monarch’s coffin. All in black, apart from a double-strand pearl necklace, Margrethe wore the same silk shirt and suit created for the funeral of her late husband, Henrik, Prince Consort of Denmark, in 2018. On her right was her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, Denmark’s future king, his navy service coat adorned with medals, his expression a mirror of his mother’s. The Danish royals looked…