You Never Had a Trip Back from Hong Kong Quite Like This…A Star Studded Lounge

I’ve been reading Lyndsy Spence’s The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne, who may be better known to many as Doris Castlerosse. She was considered one of London’s most beautiful women in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as one of the city’s most sexually liberated.

Anyway, in 1936 Doris took a tour of the Orient – Java, Bali, Singapore, the Philippines, Malay States, Sri Lanka, China (where she certainly popped into Peking) and Japan – departing for home from Hong Kong. Now many of us have departed Hong Kong for London and bumped into the odd interesting person but Doris’s ship home had a great cast:

• William Rootes – luxury car maker and, at the time, engaged in an affair with Doris
• Geoffrey Rootes – his son and who was accompanied by a ‘nymphomaniac’ friend of Doris’s to keep him occupied
• Hon. Mrs Hubert Parker – born Loryn Bowser of Kentucky before marrying Hubert Lister Parker, Baron Parker of Waddington and a leading barrister
• Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard – the film stars obviously
• Jean Cocteau – the French writer, designer, artist, filmmaker, opium addict etc etc

Beat that next time you’re in line at Chek Lap Kok and scanning your fellow passengers….