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Welcome to the house of scandal, scares and squabbles, Mr Vice President.
Chevening is the ultimate ministerial perk. Apart from the prime minister’s hideaway, Chequers, it’s the most lavish of all government grace-and-favour mansions.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy says he and his weekend house guest JD Vance get on because they “share a similar working-class background” and are “both Christians”.
Politics latest: JD Vance arrives in the UK
But Chevening could not be more upper class. It was home to earls, viscounts and other titled aristocrats for 250 years – and has had an ungodly history.
Set in 3,000 acres in Kent countryside, this 17th-century mansion has a lake, marble fireplaces and chandeliers, 13 Roman tombstones and a suit of armour from the Spanish Armada.
Chevening House. Pic: PA
Chevening faced scandal in 1999 when Labour foreign secretary Robin Cook’s ex-wife, Margaret, who loved the place, vented her fury at him taking second wife, Gaynor Regan, who had been his mistress, to Chevening.
In a bitter memoir, A Slight and Delicate Creature, in which she accused him of womanising and drunkenness, Margaret wrote acidly that she hoped Gaynor enjoyed the food and drink that she had paid for.
In 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, just weeks after divorcing his wife Marina, PM Boris Johnson was accused of missing Cobra meetings as he spent two weeks at Chevening with then-girlfriend Carrie Symonds, now his wife.
The most alarming scare came when a senior diplomat apparently could not escape…
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