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Find out moreOur next exhibition 'Lives Less Ordinary' opens in January 2025. Find out when we are next open to the public via our 'What's On' page!
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Nestled in the centre of London overlooking the Thames, the fantastic location and stunning interiors of William Waldorf Astor's 'hidden gem' make Two Temple Place the perfect choice for your next event.
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Lives Less Ordinary
An Exhibition Inviting New Thinking
30th January 2025 -
20th April 2025
Our 2025 exhibition explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class culture and creative expression in post-war Britain. We’ll be presenting surprising and unknown works from key UK…
![Today is World Letter Writing Day, a day that celebrates the connections built through communicating through hand written letters. Founded by Rochard Simpkin in 2014, the day aims to encourage people to write a letter to someone special. Writing a letter is usually a more expressive way of communication than the more common emailing or texting and often includes parts of our personality.
The commissioner of Two Temple Place, William Waldorf Astor was a letter enthusiast and keen collector. His collection included historical letters penned by Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys amongst others.
We know from his daughter Pauline’s reflections that ‘his writing table was always tidy, with pencils beautifully sharpened by himself with the same penknife he had carried in his pocket since boyhood, and nothing was ever out of place’.
These images are of a few letters sent by Astor in 1913 to ‘Lady Sackville’ (likely to be Vicotria Sackville West, the mother of Vita) each including a mention of Two Temple Place. He refers to the building by various names across the letters. In some he calls it his office, in another he says that those who know him well call the building ‘the studio’. He also describes it as ‘the palace’ and provides many mentions of its location on the Victoria Embankment. Astor also describes it having ‘only one entrance’ and the fact that it has ‘no number’. In the first image he writes that his office is ‘a little palace on the Embankment where [he] live[s] in solitude’.
The letter in the final image, however, shows that Victoria did not approve of his suggestion of ‘the Embankment palace’ and Astor agrees to ‘not refer to it again’…
#TwoTemplePlace #WorldLetterWritingDay #WilliamWaldorfAstor #VictoriaSackvilleWest #LetterWriting #HistoricalLetters #VictorianHistory](https://twotempleplace.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)