Claude Rains was ahead of his time. At the end of Lawrence of Arabia, when Alec Guinness’s Prince Feisal asks Mr Dryden, the head of Britain’s Arab Bureau, whether it was worth stirring up revolt and setting the desert on fire, Rains’s character wistfully reflects: “On the whole, I wish I’d stayed in Tunbridge Wells.”
Many may have had the same thought, many still do and in the post-pandemic age the sentiment is growing. This Kent town on the northern High Weald has soothed many a troubled soul, be it a Lawrence of Arabia or a Florence of Belgravia, ever since a courtier to James I drank from a local spring in 1606 and found it worked wonders on his delicate tummy.
A three-bedroom property half a mile from the centre is on the market for £450,000 with Savills
Given royal
