“He rode up the cliffside, laying back on the donkey’s bum after so many drinks,” is how one entry describes Williams’s departure after a lunch of sardines in 1973. Wheeler’s mother, Tessa Codrington, remembers a friend calling the US consulate for more supplies of bourbon, Williams’s tipple. Paul Bowles signed the book, Dominick Dunne rocked Tangier’s kasbah, Richard Burton flirted at cocktail parties, the polo player Lloyd Franklin (Barbara Hutton’s American lover) swung by with his guitar and, in 1992, a scribbled thank-you note is simply signed “The Grand Duchess of Russia”. During the second world war, when the house was used by the allies as a secret radio station, an entry recalls Codrington’s father driving de Gaulle from Dar Sinclair to the Casablanca Conference in a mud-spattered Jeep.

“Everyone thinks that when my friends come down to the house, it becomes this glamorous holiday,” Wheeler says of the annual pilgrimage she makes with her friends from all over Europe, America and Africa to the house her mother inherited in 1972. “But looking at the guest book and hearing all these stories about the people who came here before us — we’re just a bunch of kids.”

These days, guests include Wheeler’s boyfriend, the fashion photographer Alexi Lubomirski, the art consultant Sicco Diemer and the designers Alice Temperley and Oscar de la Renta. Days at Dar Sinclair are laid-back, with long, lazy meals and siestas. People hang out by the pool, reading and sunbathing, the boys playing football; or the whole party heads for the beach. Everyone gathers for cocktails at 9pm, followed by dinner and games of charades and sardines.

Dar Sinclair was built in 1940 by Jack Sinclair, Wheeler’s maternal great-grandfather, who studied architecture in Edinburgh before, as Codrington puts it in the book she’s writing about her life in Tangier, “answering the British government’s plea for young men to go and build the British Empire in Africa”. Sinclair built what is now the presidential residence in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and then spent two decades as the British Resident of Zanzibar. He came to Tangier in 1926 with his wife, Muriel, and built four houses, of which Dar Sinclair was the smallest.

“Going there with the family every summer was amazing,” Wheeler says. “Tangier has been an important place to me since I was a little girl. As I became older and realised the social problems facing this city, I decided I wanted to do something to help.”

Two years ago, she discovered Darna (“Our House”), an organisation that helps vulnerable women and children. “Darna does so much,” she says, standing in a stable of goats at the Darna farm school. “There are dorms and classes and training programmes that teach trades to enable people to reintegrate into society in a healthy and productive way.”

Last autumn, Wheeler organised a fundraising event in New York that made more than £150,000. “Doing something good for society feels great,” she says. “But watching the faces of these children light up as they make papier-mâché or sing the alphabet is the best feeling.”

MANHATTAN LOFT CORPORATION

An article (Pod Life, Interiors, July 16) incorrectly stated that the Manhattan Loft Corporation closed in 2000. In fact, the company has never ceased trading since its establishment in 1992 and operates today as a successful business in developing contemporary apartments, offices and hotels in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. The article also stated that John Hitchcox founded the company. In fact, Mr Hitchcox was a co-founder of the company with Harry Handelsman, and together they brought this style of property development to London. We apologise for these errors.

AT HOME FOR MANY

Jacquetta supports the Darna project in Tangier, which helps destitute women and children to find safe temporary homes. Since it was founded in 1995, it has gone from strength to strength. In 2001, Darna built a shelter for 50 children. This has been followed by a house for women, a farm school and, most recently, a shop and restaurant.

See www.darnamaroc.org for more information.

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