The Hedsor Hundred

There has been a house at Hedsor since 1166, when the de Hedsor family held the estate and gave it their name. In the 1750s it was a residence of Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, mother of King George III and founder of Kew Gardens, whose son kept court a short ride away at Cliveden. From 1764 it belonged to the Barons Boston, courtiers to George III, who rebuilt it with counsel from Sir William Chambers, architect of Somerset House, and from the King himself.

The present house was completed in 1868, and Queen Victoria was received there whenever the court was at Windsor. In 1934 Hedsor was given to Philip and Florence Shephard as a wedding present. It has remained with the Shephards ever since, four generations on, and this year the family opened its doors to a gathering of its own making.

Few couples could have composed such a room. Rosie Shephard founded the Luxury Communications Council and Shephard Communications and advises UN Women UK; Hamish Shephard co-founded HelloFresh, Bridebook and Project Ambition. Between them they know, it seems, everyone worth knowing, and they hosted the day with the ease of people who have been gathering friends at Hedsor all their lives. The result felt less like an event than an invitation into their home.

The premise fitted on the first page of the programme: wonderful things happen when wonderful people are gathered. One hundred guests, one day, one table. The programme itself was engraved by Downey, printers to the great luxury houses since 1903, and the list of names inside read less like a guest list than a cross-section of the people currently shaping their fields.

The selected guests included Dame Jo Malone CBE; Sir Nicholas Coleridge, Provost of Eton College; Vanessa Kingori OBE, the first woman to publish British Vogue; Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack; Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm; Barry Smith MBE of Skyscanner; Ronan and Storm Keating; Tinie Tempah; the filmmaker and ocean advocate Alexandra Cousteau; broadcaster Jake Humphrey; the actor and producer Olivia Hamilton; and His Excellency Issam Kazim of Dubai Economy and Tourism. Around them sat founders of companies valued in the billions, Oscar and Emmy winners, a former minister, and heads of family offices into their fifth and sixth generations.

Xenia’s line in the programme was characteristically brief: entrepreneur, speaker and author who works in six languages. The card left out the day job: she runs Tchoumi Consulting, her brand-strategy consultancy, advising founders, executives and companies on positioning and long-term brand value. On a day given in partnership with TED, she came as a four-time TEDx speaker herself, the author of talks such as The Hidden Power of Pain. At the red TED letters before the house she was photographed with Rosie Shephard, with Vanessa Kingori OBE, and with David Kidder, the bestselling author of The Startup Playbook and co-founder of PreMortem. Her name card added what is occupying her most this year: how to optimise with AI. (Yes, I vibe code.)

In the hall, the guests’ own books stood in a single row beneath a lamp: Jo Malone’s My Story, Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor, Michael Acton Smith’s Calm, Jake Humphrey’s High Performance, and, among them, Xenia’s Empower Yourself. The books did not leave with their authors: they remain at Hedsor, part of the house’s collection, and Empower Yourself now has a permanent place on its shelves for every guest who comes after.

The day opened with coffee in the house and a welcome from Rosie and Hamish Shephard, then a TED workshop on How to be a Good Ancestor, led by the philosopher Roman Krznaric and introduced by Jonathan Mallow of TED. Jake Humphrey sat down with Stephen Fitzpatrick, founder of OVO Energy, to ask what drives a founder to keep founding. Rosie Shephard interviewed His Excellency Issam Kazim on the architecture of ambition, and Dan Bennett of Ogilvy Consulting ran a short boot camp in behavioural change before the polar explorer Jenny Wordsworth closed the morning.

Lunch was served in the Great Hall. Then wellingtons, and a school photograph of all one hundred on the steps of the house.

After it, a walk out into the estate, where Highland cattle watched the procession from behind the fence and the cellist Guy Johnston had carried his instrument into the woods to play.

The afternoon belonged to the Hay Bale Conversations: six discussions, no stage, no microphones, guests seated on bales across the main lawn. The subjects ran from AI in 2027 and beyond, with ey.ai, to preparing the next generation for a future no one can predict, balancing peace with performance, the creative arts against the machines, repairing the planet with TED, and, with UN Women UK, what is truly changing for women and what is only pretending to.

Xenia’s circle on the bales included Sophia Amoruso, founder of Nasty Gal and author of #Girlboss; Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, Iceland’s Minister of Justice at twenty-nine, later its Minister of Education, Science and Innovation and a candidate for prime minister; Matt Fitzpatrick, chief executive of Invisible Technologies and formerly head of McKinsey’s QuantumBlack AI labs; and Wulfie Bain of OpenAI. A founder, a stateswoman and two of the people building AI, comparing notes in a field.

As the light turned gold, the estate opened up: clay shooting before the house, where Xenia took her turn with the guns, a tasting with Berry Bros. & Rudd, wine merchants since 1698 and holders of two Royal Warrants, croquet, the beekeeper, a woodland walk.

Cocktails followed in the Willingdon Bar, then dinner for one hundred in the Ballroom, with dessert served on the move so that no conversation had to end at its chair. Carriages were called at half past nine.

For Xenia it was a day of reunions with friends from London’s worlds of media, technology and finance, among them Wulfie Bain, who leads applied AI for startups at OpenAI, and of new introductions made on hay bales rather than across a boardroom table. Some of the most interesting conversations of the year began that afternoon.

For a day that ran from the drawing room to the Highland cattle and back to the Ballroom, Xenia chose tailoring over country tweed: a double-breasted pinstripe suit by Windsor, the German house of fine tailoring, worn belted as a blazer dress beneath its matching jacket, with sheer black tights, Ralph Lauren knee boots and a black Fendi bag. One suit, carried from morning coffee to the clay line to dinner, while most of the Hundred changed into the house’s wellingtons.

The programme called it the founding year, and gatherings of this kind are remembered by their first edition. One house, held by one family for nearly a century; one hundred people, chosen by name by Rosie and Hamish Shephard. Xenia Tchoumi was among them, and is grateful to her hosts for a day that will be hard to equal.

What is The Hedsor Hundred?

An invitation-only gathering of one hundred guests at Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire, hosted by Rosie and Hamish Shephard. Its founding edition took place on 29 September 2026 in partnership with TED: a morning of ideas, an afternoon on the estate and dinner in the Ballroom.

Was Xenia Tchoumi at The Hedsor Hundred?

Yes. She was one of the one hundred selected guests of the founding edition on 29 September 2026, listed in the programme as an entrepreneur, speaker and author who works in six languages.

Where is Hedsor House?

Above the River Thames at Hedsor, near Taplow in Buckinghamshire, close to Cliveden and Windsor. There has been a house on the estate since 1166; the present house was completed in 1868, and the Shephard family have owned it since 1934.

Who was at The Hedsor Hundred 2026?

The one hundred guests included Dame Jo Malone CBE, Sir Nicholas Coleridge, Vanessa Kingori OBE, Cal Henderson, Michael Acton Smith, Ronan Keating, Tinie Tempah, Alexandra Cousteau, Jake Humphrey, Guy Johnston, Sophia Amoruso, Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xenia Tchoumi, alongside founders, investors, artists and Oscar and Emmy winners.

What did Xenia Tchoumi wear to The Hedsor Hundred?

A double-breasted pinstripe suit by Windsor, the German tailoring house, worn belted as a blazer dress beneath its matching jacket, with sheer black tights, Ralph Lauren knee boots and a black Fendi bag.

Is Xenia Tchoumi’s book at Hedsor House?

Yes. Empower Yourself by Xenia Tchoumi was among the books by guests of The Hedsor Hundred, and it remains at Hedsor House for guests to read.

Who is Xenia Tchoumi?

A Swiss-Italian entrepreneur, international media personality, keynote speaker and author from Lugano, based in London, with an online community of over 10 million people. Full biography.