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At home with the Windsors

Writer's picture: Stuart Grant Stuart Grant

Knowing that I was participating in NaNoWriMo for the fifth year in succession, I decided to get away for the last week of November in total isolation in order to have a last push on hitting those fifty thousand words. I love staying in Landmark Trust properties as they are 1) beautiful 2) unusual and 3) free of TV and wifi, so no distractions. This year I chose the only place Landmark operates in France (they also have a few in Italy and the USA plus one in Belgium but otherwise all are in the UK).

Le Moulin de la Tuilerie is about half an hour from Paris, near Versailles, outside a little town called Gif-sur-Yvette and it happens to be the former weekend retreat of the late Duke and Duchess of Windsor – the only home that Edward and Wallis ever owned together. A former mill, lovingly converted by the Duchess with interior designs by Stephane Boudin – who Jackie Kennedy subsequently used at the White House – and surrounded by extensive gardens and woods, it was clearly once ‘Party Central’. Guests such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Cecil Beaton and the Moseleys would join the royal pair for weekend house parties. The Duke was a passionate gardener and in their day the grounds were a riot of colour as he recreated a nostalgic English country garden. Nowadays it is simple lawns divided by beech hedges, framed by the woodland hillside and the watercourses from the river. What was once the miller’s race is now overgrown but ran right outside my windows.

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