IT’S THE DETAILS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU ARE TRULY LIVING IN A PALACE OF LUXURY

birch and borage. She had an array of such preparations to induce radiance, to hydrate and to tighten the skin.

Truth to tell, I was barely aware of much of the 120 minutes I lay there once Angelina began le massage de Chanel, smoothing the layer of tissue just underneath my skin with precise hand motions. Combined with the heavenly smell of camellia and vanilla that emanated from the rich creams she used while kneading out each and every fine line, and the strange, soothing music tailor-made for the ritual and designed to sonically aid in the relaxation process, it made me settle into a swoon of tranquillity. In blissful stages, there was cleansing, a special exfoliating scrub, a collagen mask, another application of Sublimage tonics and creams – and Angelina was there the whole time, which is a brilliant soulagement if, like me, you hate those moments of being left during a service as on a mortuary slab.

Before the light came back up, the music changed, and another delicious drink arrived, this one devised to further assist my skin’s regeneration and bring me out of my pleasure-derived coma. I slid deeper into reverie and imagined the faces and figures of those who might have been in the same room years earlier – the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, George H.W. Bush. Or the one I preferred to conjure in my subconscious, Mina Kirstein Curtiss, a handsome, rich and bookish young widow (sister of the New York City Ballet’s co-founder, Lincoln Kirstein), who went to Paris in 1947 to search for letters written by Proust that she was afraid would otherwise be swept out of attics into dust heaps in the chaos after the war.

Though the Nazi occupation had been over for three years, Paris was still battered, depressed, hungry, its citizens demoralised and surly. The Reich, which had commandeered half of the Ritz, left its mark on the rooms and on the cellars, settled into the comfortable suites, ordered the foie gras, and drank all the Château Lafite. The staff had held its tongue and conformed to the tradition of perfect hoteliers started by Ritz, but food was hard to come by, the kitchen pressed to sustain the level of cuisine expected of its renowned L’Espadon restaurant. But even in its straitened condition, the Ritz has always invited romance. While rescuing Proust’s letters, Mina was to enjoy a very satisfactory love affair with Antoine Bibesco, a handsome Romanian prince, who had a number of Proust’s letters and made Mina a very explicit proposition for giving them to her. She thought about it and accepted, more gracefully than, say, Tosca, and complimented him in hindsight. Bibesco, aged 69, had claimed she had cured him of impotence. She later wrote: “I must hand it to the Rumanians. Their idea of impotence in old age is the AngloSaxon notion of potency in the prime of life.”

Will the Ritz be as it was when it was filled with Proust’s aristocratic friends or those in Hemingway’s bohemian circle? The world is not as blithe as it was. But there is still the Bar Hemingway, the Salon Proust where faint wafts of madeleines, still expertly baked by pastry chef François Perret, manage to cut through that new-hotel smell, and, of course, L’Espadon, that étoile restaurant. The École Ritz Escoffier, the cooking school named for its first chef, Auguste Escoffier – the father of French cuisine – is reopening new test kitchens, too, I’m told as I recall the time I saw a teacher demonstrate how to massacre a lobster there, causing a fainting pupil to be helped out.

A staff of 600 concierges and sommeliers, chefs and voituriers, maids, room service and laundr y with amazing esprit de corps will make things again fit for a king – which, in the end, is what will set the newest incarnation of the Ritz apart from its competitors. While the utter discretion of the modernisation is impressive, with internet and air-conditioning and fabulously silent heating and cooling systems – not to mention television sets camouflaged as tinted dark patches in the wall mirrors until you turn them on – it’s the details, sumptuously tasteful, with elaborate swagged draperies, brocade spreads, velvet sofas, lovely tapestry hangings and delectably deep bathtubs that make you feel as though you are truly living in a palace of luxury. Newer high-end hotel chains like the Peninsula or the Mandarin Oriental are serious rivals for comfort, but none can offer the one thing the Ritz has in abundance: the glamour of history – of the past.

It isn’t accidental that actors George Blagden, in his full regalia, Noémie Schmidt and Anna Brewster, dressed in couture costumes that are the modern equivalent in elegance of the sumptuous clothes people wore to Louis’s court, look so at home in the hotel. “It’s very easy to feel regal here,” Blagden admitted. I asked him if he thought there were any ghosts at the Ritz. “I’m sure there are plenty,” he said running, a gloved finger through his hair. “I imagine the renovations have given them more reason to stay around a bit longer.”