Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

3.5 stars
A fascinating insight and very entertaining. The characters were interesting and gave a vivid description of life at The Savoy. I found the generations of the family so interesting - each giving so much to the dynasty. A real glimpse at life behind the scenes at such a well-known venue.

I was drawn to this book as one of my favourite National Trust properties - Coleton Fishacre in Devon- was once the home of the D'oyly Carte family and so I was keen to find out more about their history and lives. It's a well written and well researched book that brings the period it covers and the many characters to life. An entertaining read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.
An interesting and informative read, written by someone who clearly put a lot of effort and care into crafting this novel.
A good read.

My thanks to Netgalley and Headline for a copy of “ The Secret Life Of The Savoy” for an honest review .
This was a well written , very detailed and informative book.I must admit only reading the first part of the title I was expecting more about The Savoy as a hotel and not so much about The D,oyley Family , but that was my mistake .
I’m sure anyone who enjoys history would find this Of interest.

A really interesting read. I loved seeing London through this book and the changes that came about alongside the development of the Savoy Empire. Lots of fascinating snippets from all the characters who visited. A different and interesting look at history which I enjoyed.

A detailed history of the Savoy Hotel and the family who founded it. This includes the debut of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the original Savoy theatre, the struggle to build a truly luxurious hotel in the London of the Victorian age, and then to sell the idea of a luxurious hotel to the public! Intriguing and full of detail and description, as well as the scandals and intrigue of a high class hotel.

In the late 1800s theatrical impresario Richard Cart decided to change his name to D'Oyly Carte and to team up with a composer and librettist to produce a series of successful light operas, Gilbert and Sullivan were the artists and D'Oyly Carte the business brain. Through a series of dubious deals D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre company expanded, first into owning a theatre and then into developing a hotel in London. This was a first, a luxury hotel designed for the wealthy and the famous where nothing was too expensive, too outrageous or too demanding. So the Savoy Group was founded and the D'Oyly Carte family stayed in control for nearly 100 years.
This was a really interesting book about the Savoy group but the real focus is on the D'Oyly Carte family. Although the introduction starts with scandal, the snippets around the guests and staff at the hotel group are very much second to the biographies of the three generations of the family that controlled this institution. Richard was a wheeler dealer and a man moving up in the world, Rupert was someone who understood his clientele and developed a brand through the wars and Bridget a woman beyond her times.

I'm not normally one for the whole Hotel Babylon bit, but as per a recurring theme here, the Savoy is different, right down to the pub quiz standby about the road outside being the only place in Britain where one legally drives on the other side. There's the Gilbert & Sullivan link, of course; the being the birth of the modern electric world, as per that wonderful exchange in Stoppard's Invention Of Love. More than that, though, the name suggests a nexus of late 19th to 20th century glamour and luxury, a place where everyone who was anyone would pop up sooner or later, generally doing something ridiculously fancy or vaguely scandalous. And so it proves; here are JM Barrie and Conan Doyle collaborating on a flop light opera after the demise of Gilbert & Sullivan (whose own sad story also features extensively – though there's a satisfaction to knowing how wrong Gilbert was when he insisted "Posterity wil kow as little of me as I shall know of posterity"); Churchill refusing to quit his favourite, glass-fronted dining room despite the Blitz; the death which inspired Poor Little Girl by another habitué, Noel Coward. A concert at the Savoy was the first trans-Atlantic broadcast; Paul Robeson and Dionne Warwick would also perform. It's full of fascinating tit-bits about these celebrated guests, but also about the establishment itself through the years, from the attempt to sell the English on frogs' legs by rebranding them as 'nymphs at dawn', to the dedicated maid tasked specifically with tidying up the beads from flappers' dresses between dances, and the various members of staff whose reputations would sometimes rival those of the guests.

Behind them all, though, and forming the spine of the book, are the presiding D'Oyly Carte family themselves. Their founder, rising from humble beginnings to become "a Monopoly player in full flow" as he expands his hotel empire. He makes it through being horribly ripped off by his trusted lieutenants Escoffier and Ritz (the latter angling to set up his own business on D'Oyly Carte's money), but ultimately dies in his fifties, at once an enormous success and a broken man. Following him, the second generation of Rupert (supposed model for Wodehouse's Psmith) and Lucas (Williams convincingly argues the actual model – plus, Wilde's rival for Bosie's affections, and of course there are extra angles to the scandalous revelations at the trial when it's happening in your dad's gaff. But isn't that already a wonderful crossover, even before you consider the further links to one of the models for James Bond?). After Rupert, and much to everyone's surprise, his daughter Bridget – and here the life does go out of the book a little, both because she's a rather sadder figure, her faith in herself shattered by an overbearing mother and an unhappy marriage, and because more people with a personal stake are still alive. So that the book does things like admit Bridget was a long-term mistress to someone, but not say who, which feels much fairer on the subject and the sources than the reader. Still, even through that, and the fug of Bridget's 80-a-day habit, there are characters like Onassis and his rival shipping tycoons, of whom I was only dimly aware beforehand but who come across as a wonderfully schlocky prestige TV drama waiting to happen.

This progression would have made for a somewhat melancholy read anyway, with the book inevitably ending on the extinction of the line, the demise of the money-bleeding Opera Company, the shy Bridget spending her last years fighting a series of takeover attempts by the grisly capitalists of a later generation who saw only that the Savoy could be made more profitable, not that doing so would necessarily be to make it less fabulous. But the sensation is far more acute for the book coming out now. Williams is interested in the Savoy not only for its own sake, but as the ground zero of the modern world, of a London full of fine cuisine, glamorous nightlife, theatre where the audience pay full attention to the stage – the cultural capital of the world. And she writes as though that were still the present, rather than a past which now feels as distant and irretrievable as any Gilbert & Sullivan premiere. There is one horrible presentiment when she mentions the establishment's insistence that waiters should always keep two yards apart, but even in the Second World War, the government's indefinite closure of theatres is countermanded after only a week. The flu pandemics of the 20th century, all of them far deadlier than COVID, don't even merit a mention (unless it was in one of the spots where my Netgalley ARC had lost chunks of sentences – something that disrupts the flow of reading less than you might think, even if I'm sure I missed a few zingers). Hell, even aside from London culture's utter crumbling, it would be depressing enough to read the summary of D'Oyly that "He was so deft in bringing together his mishmash of influences that his theatre and hotel were soon thought of as quintessentially British and timeless, when in fact they were cosmopolitan and new" and be reminded that even the Victorians weren't really anything like so closed-off and disdainful of the world as their modern admirers have made contemporary Britain.

I quite enjoyed this book. It is informative, full of historical details and facts. Through three generations of D'Oyly Cartes, we explore the story of the luxury hotel and modern theatre with its scandals, gossip, famous people, and, sometimes, murders.

Richard D’Oyly Carte was the founder of both the hotel and the theatre. He launched the career Gilbert and Sullivan and he worked hard to create the first luxury hotel in Britain. At his death, his son Rupert took the reins of the empire and he passed it on to his daughter Bridget and their dominion ended in 1985 with her death.

This is a fascinating and interesting read, a very well written work of non-fiction!

This is a great book to get lost in as you find yourself in the halls and bedrooms of the Savoy hotel. I knew nothing about the D'Oyly Carte family so I found myself completely engrossed in their history and how much their influence flooded London culture and society. A great book that reads so easily and well!

An excellent book, well researched and highly entertaining.
I didn't know anything about the D'Oyly Carte family and was fascinated by discovering how they were great hotelier as patron of theatre.
The author is a good storytelling and it talks about facts, well known names in a very pleasant way.
The book is well researched and highly informative, strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mine

Oh I loved this!!
Great research, great stories

If you are interested in history this is a great one