The King in the Library

Hartwell House and the man who reclaimed the French throne from Buckinghamshire

Jun 18, 2026

One of the advantages of working at Historic Royal Palaces is that most of the people there love history — not just the ones, like the curators, whose actual job it is.

Some of the most enthusiastic historians I’ve known were the Historic Royal Palaces Security Advisor, the Head of Health and Safety, and the Head of Internal Audit.

We meet here for history once a week! Join us?

I got to know the latter after an audit of collections management. Let’s say it could have gone better, but he nevertheless invited me to speak to his history club. It met at Hartwell House, now a wonderful hotel belonging to the National Trust, in Buckinghamshire.

Off I went, fell in love with Hartwell House, and immediately instigated an annual tradition of spending 24 hours there for a walk in the park, a swim and a sumptuous dinner.

This has been going for sixteen years now, so it’s pretty clear I’m a massive fan.

Hartwell House is Jacobean with Georgian additions and Rococo interiors that are quite frankly trying to upstage everything else. Set in peaceful parkland, it looks as though nothing exciting has ever happened here.

For the history lover, though, the connections are tumultuous and international.

One of the surprises Hartwell House has up its sleeve is the fact that the King of France lived here for five years.

To understand how Louis XVIII ended up in a rented house in Buckinghamshire, you have to go back to the night of 20 June 1791.

He was then the Comte de Provence — younger brother of Louis XVI, the king who would, two years later, lose his head to the guillotine, and brother-in-law of Marie Antoinette, who would lose hers shortly after.

Louis in his library, me in Louis's library. I didn't reclaim any thrones there.

That night, the whole royal family attempted to flee Revolutionary Paris in a coach, heading for the north-eastern border, disguised as the household of a Russian noblewoman. The king played the part of her servant.

Just forty miles from the border, at the small town of Varennes, Louis was recognised.

Paid subscribers can read the rest of what I can only describe as a ripping yarn!