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Chipping
Norton, England — The power centers of British politics and media may reside in
London, but their tentacles extend to a tiny working-class market town with
rows of glistening stone buildings, 17th-century pubs and a medieval church.
This
politically conservative Tory stronghold in rural Oxfordshire, with its green
hills dotted with sheep and cottages with slate roofs, is in some ways London’s
amped-up version of the Hamptons — if President Obama, David Axelrod and Rupert
Murdoch were neighbors and went horseback riding and ate suppers together.
The
area around Chipping Norton, about an hour-and-a-half drive northwest
from London on the M40 motorway, is home to Prime Minister David Cameron’s
constituency in Witney, as well as to Lady Astor and Viscount Astor, the mother
and stepfather of Mr. Cameron’s wife, Samantha. Rebekah
Brooks, the former head of Mr. Murdoch’s British newspapers, and
her husband, Charlie Brooks, an old friend of Mr. Cameron’s brother from Eton,
have homes just outside town, as does a who’s-who of British media, politics
and entertainment, like Jeremy Clarkson, the raconteur co-host of the BBC’s
highly rated “Top
Gear”; Alex James, the former bassist in Blur; and the actor Sir
Ben Kingsley. Within a short drive can be found Damien Hirst
(Gloucestershire); the writer and socialite Jemima Kahn (Woodstock); and Steve
Hilton, Mr. Cameron’s former chief strategist, and his wife, Rachel Whetstone,
in charge of public relations at Google (Burford).
The
reigning golden couple of “the Chipping Norton set,” as it’s been labeled by
the British press — Elisabeth
Murdoch,
a daughter of Rupert, and her husband, Matthew Freud, who founded one of
Britain’s most powerful public relations firms — lives nearby in Burford
Priory, a converted priory that dates to the 10th century and has its own
cemetery and chapel.
It’s
a chummy world — one of shooting and tweed — but one that has been shaken in
the last two years in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal at Mr. Murdoch’s
British tabloids. It is a scandal that has splintered some longstanding relationships,
made social gatherings occasionally awkward and made the clique of power
brokers in the area even more of an object of fascination for the British
public.
For
years, the set existed in relative seclusion, socializing at Mr. Cameron’s
favorite pub, the Kingham Plough, or in one another’s
rustic kitchens with their exposed limestone walls and Aga stoves. (Think:
Wellington boots and Barbour jackets.)
“It’s
very pretty and suits urban people who don’t particularly like the countryside
but like the idea of liking it,” James Hanning, a co-author of “Cameron:
Practically a Conservative,” said of the Cotswolds, the hills that include
Chipping Norton.
Alastair Campbell, who was
former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s communications director, said: “If you go to
Chipping Norton, there are farm laborers and miners. But if you really breathe
in the essence of the place, it’s what you imagine David Cameron being.” (While
he was prime minister, Mr. Blair had a home in his constituency of Sedgefield
in Northeast England, and used Chequers, the official countryside residence of
the prime minister.)
Then
came the summer of 2011. To celebrate the completed renovation of their Burford
home, Mr. Freud and Ms. Murdoch hosted a bacchanalia for guests like the Labour
politician David Miliband and the singer Lily Allen. It featured a jazz band and, for
those who stayed the night, brunch. The next day, The Guardian published a report that The News of the World,
which was one of Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers, had hacked into the voice mail of
Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl whose cellphone was hacked after she disappeared and
was later found murdered. The news set in motion a series of events — the
closing of The News of the World, the arrest of Ms. Brooks — that have made
this area, reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel, the center of a modern British
drama.
Since
then the set has splintered, the parties have mostly ended, and the place has
quieted. “We’re in a period of calm,” said a person close to Ms. Brooks who
asked to remain anonymous to protect that friendship. Maybe, this person added,
it’s like the part of “The Great Gatsby” when guests drive up the long driveway
of Jay Gatsby’s West Egg mansion, only to find the lights turned off. (Of
course, that story didn’t end well for Gatsby.)
In
a widely talked-about column in 2011,
Peter Oborne, chief political commentator for The Daily Telegraph, called the
set “an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral
Londoners.”
In
September, Ms. Brooks faces trial on several charges, including conspiracy “to
conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment” related to police
investigations and corruption at The News of the World and The Sun, another
Murdoch holding. Her husband also faces a conspiracy charge. In public
statements, the Brookses have denied the allegations.
“I
feel today is an attempt to use me and others as scapegoats,” Mr. Brooks said
after being charged in May. He added that his wife “is the subject of a witch
hunt.” (A lawyer representing Ms. Brooks declined to comment for this article.)
THE
RISE OF CHIPPING NORTON can be attributed in part to an unlikely and uniquely
British alchemy of class, politics and geography. Chipping Norton and the wider
Cotswolds are easily accessible from West London and, specifically, Notting
Hill, which evolved into a popular area for London’s media elite because of its
proximity to the former BBC headquarters.
Residents
in the city’s other neighborhoods might spend weekends in the South Downs, but
the Notting Hill crowd prefers the towns of Burford, Stow-on-the-Wold and Cirencester.
(Real estate agents call the area of the Cotswolds between this troika “the
golden triangle.” The media has called it “Posh-tershire.”)
About
20 miles north of Oxford, Chipping Norton also has a certain intellectual
appeal. Many of the people with homes in the area (including Mr. Cameron)
attended Oxford, though the crowd is better known for its bashes than its book
clubs.
The
group mostly consists of professionals in their mid-40s who come from
well-known, moneyed families but who, with the exception of Mr. Brooks, have
also built their own companies and fortunes.
Ms.
Murdoch started the television production company Shine Group, which she sold
to her father’s company, the News Corporation, for $674 million in
2011. Mr. Freud, a great-grandson of Sigmund Freud and a nephew of the artist Lucian Freud known for his eclectic
dinner parties, started Freud Communications.
Ms.
Brooks came from humble beginnings and worked her way up to become the chief
executive of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of the News
Corporation, and one of Mr. Murdoch’s most trusted confidantes.
The
town of Chipping Norton (known to locals as “Chippy”) hasn’t always welcomed
the London arrivals. And many residents don’t love their newfound attention.
“This
is still a working-class town, and this is a working-class pub,” said Peter
Shirley, a retiree who nursed a pint by a stone fireplace on a Thursday
afternoon in the Kings Arms pub. “That changes on the
weekends,” he said. “These tall people named Giles and Pippa show up.”
Chipping
Norton came into wider view during the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics in
Britain. In one text message from Ms. Brooks to Mr. Cameron, she allegedly
responded to a complaint from Mr. Cameron about coverage in The Times of
London, a Murdoch-owned newspaper. The Sun, which Ms. Brooks also oversaw at
the time, had recently switched its allegiances to Tories. “Seriously, I do
understand the issue with the Times,” she wrote. “Let’s discuss over country
supper soon.”
Now
known as “The Country Supper” text, the message, sent in 2009 and uncovered
last year, exposed this quiet little corner of the English countryside and its
tightknit residents.
The
precursor to the Chipping Norton set was, many people say, the Blenheim
Palace set. Before they bought their home in Burford in 2008,
Mr. Freud and Ms. Murdoch had a 20-year lease on a nine-bedroom house on three
acres within the palace grounds. The palace, the birthplace of Winston
Churchill, has a gilded gate, 2,000 acres with formal gardens and a dramatic
driveway that offers the first sweeping view of opulence on the road connecting
Oxford to the countryside.
Before
she married Mr. Brooks, Ms. Brooks (then Rebekah Wade) also leased a home on
the palace’s grounds.
In
2006, at a dinner party at Mr. Clarkson’s house just outside Chipping Norton,
Ms. Wade, then the editor of The Sun, met Mr. Brooks, a racehorse trainer whose
old-money family has roots in this part of England. Three years later the
couple married in the village of Churchill.
Their
newlywed days corresponded to a high in News Corporation’s power in Britain —
it looked poised to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting. At the same
time, Mr. Cameron’s political star had risen. Mr. Brooks, a friend of Mr.
Cameron’s brother from Eton, had converted a barn between the towns Sarsden and
Churchill, a short drive from the Camerons’ estate.
For
better or worse, the area — with its wildly ornate manors and working-class
market towns — has become inextricably linked to Mr. Cameron’s image. In
another text message discussed during the Leveson Inquiry, he thanked Ms. Brooks
for the horse her husband had lent him.
Mr.
Cameron’s text message read: “The horse CB put me on. Fast, unpredictable and
hard to control but fun. DC.” (Mr. Cameron had also occasionally signed off
text messages to Ms. Brooks with the letters “LOL,” thinking the shorthand for “laugh
out loud” stood for “lots of love,” according to Ms. Brooks’s testimony.)
ON
A JANUARY AFTERNOON, a light snow fell on the 1,700 grassy acres in the
Cotswolds that surround Daylesford Organic, a farm-to-table
food shop set up in a stone farmhouse with a cheese room and scented geranium-leaf
candles for about $30.
The
facility, which also offers Pilates, meditation and massages, became a popular
haunt for the Chipping Norton set. It’s also become the butt of locals’ jokes.
The crowd hissed when the comedian Mark Steel mentioned Daylesford in his
routine broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January.
“You
can feast on a locally sourced, no-chemicals crisp for as little as 700 pounds,”
he said, adding that it’s worth the price because it’s so good for the
environment. “Everything is organic and local, including the people who go
there who have driven only 90 miles in a Range Rover.”
Places
popular with the moneyed class like Daylesford are thriving, but the
phone-hacking probe and political climate have chipped away at the gatherings
that once defined the social scene. “I wonder if without Rebekah Brooks in
power, the ‘set’ really amounts to much any more,” Peter Stothard, a former
editor of The Times of London who now edits The Times Literary Supplement, said
by e-mail.
Still,
the occasional run-in is inevitable. In June, at the Cornbury Music Festival,
an annual ritual that last summer featured Elvis Costello and Macy Gray, a
casual Mr. Cameron and his family meandered around to the festival’s tents and
food stalls. Observers said he seemed careful not to run into Ms. Brooks, who
also attended the festival, wearing a navy blue Barbour jacket, her red hair
pulled back.
In
a V.I.P. area, Mr. Cameron did see Andy Coulson, his former communications
chief and the former editor of The News of the World, who, like Ms. Brooks, is
facing charges related to phone hacking, which he has denied. A spokesman for
No. 10 Downing Street told The Guardian, “They did not speak or meet — it’s
categorical.” But one person who attended the festival said they did briefly talk.
Either way, just being at the same festival drew criticism. (A spokesman for
Mr. Cameron did not respond to requests for comment.)
In
December, Mr. Cameron was spotted talking to Ms. Brooks at a Christmas party at Merriscourt, a
converted 17th-century farmhouse owned by Tom Astor, a great-grandson of the
heiress Nancy Astor, drawing public scrutiny. Mr. Cameron told BBC Radio 5 Live:
“My wife’s cousin had a party, and I went. It’s not a big deal.”
“What
really matters is the country,” he added. “I am very focused on the job I do.”
In
a column in The Sunday Times in 2011, Mr.
Clarkson mocked the suggestion that he and his neighbors conspire while
socializing in the countryside. “We began with a cocktail made from crushed
socialists,” he wrote of a 2010 Christmas dinner hosted by the Brookses and
attended by, among others, the Camerons and James Murdoch, a son of Mr. Murdoch’s. “And
after we’d discussed how the trade union movement could be smashed and how News
Corp. should be allowed to take control of the BBC, Rupert Murdoch joined us on
a live video feed from his private volcano, stroking a white cat.”
In
reality, he said, Mr. Cameron and Ms. Brooks discussed sausage rolls at that
now-infamous Christmas dinner. “Rebekah was worried about what we’d eat,” Mr.
Clarkson wrote. “Cameron thought sausage rolls would be nice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/fashion/a-weekend-in-the-country-britains-power-elite-at-play.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0