His father painted in a loose Post-impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art informel, and held regular soirées with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement.

The couple held numerous soirées and afternoon bazaars for friends and neighbours, and Sunnyside became a leading social centre for politicians and artists, including Sarah Bernhardt.

Thus, Zhivkova and her second husband Ivan Slavkov held renowned Friday soirées at their central Sofia apartment, offering opportunities for those with a cause to lobby her father indirectly.

(Hamptons "share" houses hold soirées in Manhattan from March to early May to replace the inevitable dropouts.)

She began holding Democratic soirées in hopes of fostering party consensus on avoiding those campaigns' foreign-policy pitfalls.

She held soirées or receptions where the rich and famous - men such as the Duke of Wellington, Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson - regularly attended.

Since then, almost every reigning monarch has spent time (or held soirées) at Holyrood.

After retiring from travelling, Stewart eventually settled in London where he held philosophical soirées and earned a reputation as one of the city's celebrated eccentrics.

She has begun holding Plimptonesque soirées, and fantasizes about a coffee bar on the second floor (don't tell Dad; he's anti-cappuccino).

Its wealthier members had taken to purchasing estates on the outskirts of London where they could live fashionable lives and hold soirées to which polite society could be invited.