In Brenners, Germany’s grandest grand hotel, in Baden-Baden, Germany’s smartest spa town, there’s a corner of a foreign drawing room that is forever England. Above the fireplace hangs a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the Honourable Mrs Beresford – a quintessential English Rose in a quintessential German Kaminhalle. At first sight it seems incongruous but in fact it’s rather fitting, for this hotel and this spa town epitomises the close relationship between the British and German upper classes, a relationship only slightly sullied by the awkward happenstance of two world wars.