He didn’t quite have the same impact as Sir Winston Churchill while living at 10 Downing Street, but that has apparently not deterred Rishi Sunak from moving into another London property formerly occupied by his illustrious Conservative predecessor.
I hear that Sunak is considering buying a 19th-century town house where Churchill lived after he lost the 1945 general election to Labour. The seven-bedroom home is on the market for £19.5million.
‘Rishi and his wife viewed the house with an estate agent,’ a neighbour tells me. ‘It is one of several properties in West London that they have been to view.’
It would represent a big step up the property ladder for Sunak and his wife, Akshata, the daughter of an Indian billionaire, as they currently own a much smaller home in a mews street in Kensington. They bought the house in 2010, a year after their wedding, for a reported £4.5million. It’s now worth an estimated £6.6 million.
Churchill originally owned the house next door to the one viewed by the Sunaks, which he used as his office before buying this property for £7,000 and combining the two properties into one sprawling home.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is contemplating buying a 19th century townhouse that once belonged to Sir Winston Churchill
Mr Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty allegedly viewed the house with an estate agent
Churchill lived in the property after losing the 1945 general election to Labour and plotted his political return there
If the Sunaks do buy the house, perhaps it will encourage the former prime minister to consider a political comeback? Churchill plotted his return to No 10 from the property, before winning the 1951 election for the Conservatives.
After his death in 1965, the house was sold as one unit but it has since been separated back into two.
Last year, I disclosed that the Marquess of Bath and his wife, Strictly Come Dancing star Emma Weymouth, had bought the next-door property for £18.5million.
The Marquess, whose ancestral seat is Longleat House in Wiltshire, bought Churchill’s home from a multi-millionaire divorcee whose former husband’s Nazi-supporting grandfather was convicted at the Nuremberg trials.
Friedrich Flick, a leading backer of the Nazis, was one of the Circle of Friends, a group of industrialists set up to create links between businesses and the Third Reich. He was sentenced to seven years in jail.
Donatella Flick, who was married to Friedrich’s grandson Muck, bought the house near Hyde Park for £2.5million in 1996. She has defended Friedrich, claiming his imprisonment for crimes against humanity was a miscarriage of justice.
The Marquess of Bath Ceawlin Thynn and Marchioness of Bath Emma Weymouth seen arriving at The Chiltern Firehouse in 2023. The pair bought the West London for £18.5million last year
Ceawlin Thynn (right) speaks to Prince William (left) as his wife watches on. The Marquess bought Churchill’s home from a multi-millionaire divorcee whose former husband’s Nazi-supporting grandfather was convicted at the Nuremberg trials
She turned the bedroom where Churchill died into a sitting room dominated by a black-and-white colour scheme. ‘Very simple, very strict, a little bit severe,’ she explained. ‘That’s the way I am.’
In the spot where Churchill’s bed stood, she placed a coffee table laden with glossy books and tall white candles.
Monogrammed cushions adorned black sofas, while on the staircase there was a bust of Wilhelm Furtwangler, the German conductor who fought off accusations that he was a Nazi sympathiser.