The Café Royal

Hotel Café Royal
South side of entrance, 2008
General information
Coordinates	51°30′36″N 0°8′9″W / 51.51000°N 0.13583°W / 51.51000; -0.13583Coordinates: 51°30′36″N 0°8′9″W / 51.51000°N 0.13583°W / 51.51000; -0.13583
Website
http://hotelcaferoyal.com/

The Hotel Café Royal is a five-star hotel at 68 Regent Street in London's Piccadilly. Before its conversion in 2008–2012 it was a restaurant and meeting place.

The establishment was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management, and later that of his wife the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world.

By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. Its patrons have included Oscar Wilde,Aleister Crowley,Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, Noël Coward, Brigitte Bardot, Max Beerbohm, George Bernard Shaw, Jacob Epstein, Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhammad Ali and Diana, Princess of Wales.The café was the scene of a famous meeting on 24 March 1895, when Frank Harris advised Oscar Wilde to drop his charge of criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Alfred Douglas. Queensberry was acquitted, and Wilde was subsequently tried, convicted and imprisoned. From 1951, the Café Royal was the home of the National Sporting Club. It was bought by David Locke in 1972.