Harry and Meghan’s battle to be accepted into Cotswolds high society

London : The swimming pool is long, serene and lined with huge healing crystals, the water unbroken. The sauna is full of financiers, businessmen and banter led by Sir Ben Elliot, the former Tory chairman and nephew of Queen Camilla. Wellness-obsessed housewives ease themselves into cold-plunge barrels. Battles rage on the padel courts, involving illustrious names such as the Belvoir scion Lady Alice Manners, jeweller Charlie Pragnell and Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and husband of Rebekah, Rupert Murdoch’s UK media chief. Upstairs afterwards, it’s Chateau Leoube rosé and WFB: working from Bamford. More specifically, The Club by Bamford.

None of my sources have spotted Meghan here yet, but this is the place the Sussexes will really need to crack if they want to make it into a certain Cotswolds set. And it will be much trickier to enter this world than the celebrity enclave Soho Farmhouse, where the Duchess of Sussex was seen earlier this month amid much speculation that the pair have decided to put down roots in the Cotswolds.

A ready-made heaven of cream tones, The Club requires an annual fee of £4000 ($7500), a £1650 joining fee and the approval of the committee to become a member. Member or not, Meghan should seek to impress its owner, Cotswolds power broker Lady Bamford. The Club is on the Daylesford Farm estate, along with its famous shop and Daylesford House itself, where Lady B, as she’s known to friends, lives with her husband, Lord Bamford – owner of JCB and donor to both the Tories and Reform UK. If Meghan wants to rise socially here, Carole Bamford is exactly who she needs. In the court of the Cotswolds, she is queen.

“If you get invited to one of her personal parties,” says a longstanding member of the hierarchy, nervous about identification, “you’re in. Carole knows absolutely everybody. If she’s curious about someone, she’ll probably invite them. JD Vance went to Daylesford, Boris Johnson [had his wedding celebrations there] and Jeremy Clarkson is there the whole time. She can entertain on a large scale.”

But there is a dividing line between new Cotswolds and old Cotswolds. While the Bamfords themselves are as respected, country-savvy and popular as you can get, the “new Cotswolds” set, who come to play at the weekend and splash the cash at places such as Daylesford, are more overtly glossy – bankers and hedgefunders rather than farmers and gentry – and are sometimes looked down upon by the people who see themselves as “real country”. Meghan will have to choose which group she wants to appeal to most.

The challenge of becoming a member of the Daylesford scene won’t be the only uphill battle for Meghan as she seeks to become accepted in the Cotswolds. At a grand dinner party last Saturday night, one social friend conducted an experiment: “I sat next to these men and started talking about Meghan, and one almost left. He said, ‘If you say that word one more time …’ So it wasn’t only ‘We don’t want anything to do with her’, but ‘Do not degrade my house by bringing it up’.