Up pour le Bristol Cup!

January doesn't sound like the best time of year to play tennis in Europe, but between 1920 and 1932, the most prestigious tennis tournament was the Bristol Cup, held in the New Year at the Hotel Bristol in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. The hotel was built built by Blundel Maple, of the Maples furniture store in Tottenham Court Road, and it included tennis courts, now the town's tennis club. In 1921 Clementine Churchill was delighted to win four games in a single-set doubles match against Wimbledon champion Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers. She was staying at the Bristol while waiting to join Winston on an official trip to Egypt. But writing to him on February 21, she complained, “I am very solitary in this big rather dreary hotel.”