Woof! Ouch!
The Dukes of Westminster believe their family name - Grosvenor - began with one Hugh Lupus, a nephew of William The Conqueror. Lupus supplied 60 ships to his uncle for the Norman Invasion and, for this, he was awarded the Earldom of Chester. He was styled le gros veneur, the big huntsman, which the Grosvenors generously translated as “Master of the King’s Hounds”. To this day, the Grosvenors own vast swaths of Mayfair and Belgravia, two of London’s most desirable - and impossibly expensive - areas. John Adams, America’s first minister to the Court of St James’s, lived in Grosvenor Square, which was for a longtime the site of the American Embassy. But it’s the Square’s nickname, got during WW II, that’s of interest to me.