The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
ESSENTIALS
given a velvet footstool for my handbag.
Of course I stayed in some terrible hotels too. There was the creaky single room in Hereford with dark furniture that was sticky to the touch and had a door that rattled in the middle of the night as the lecherous desk clerk tried to get in. There was the freezing cold hotel in rural China that reeked so oppressively of cigarette smoke it was difficult to sleep. There was the place in Mali, where the number of cockroaches seemed inversely proportional to any reliable electrical current.
And then there are the mediocre hotels: the ones that charge you too much for too little, where you have to pay for internet access and the shower gel and shampoo are contained in a single squeezy bottle attached to the bathroom tiles and breakfast runs for a single, measly hour from 7.30-8.30am.
Everywhere there are bowls of apples. Why are hotels obsessed with bowls of overly shined red apples, gradually acquiring layers of dust? How long do they stay there for? What happens to the apples when they’ve served their purpose? I tried one once; it was fusty and stale, and when it came to writing my third novel, Paradise City (opening line: “He loved hotels”) I put this experience into the hands of my anti-hero, the bombastic billionaire Howard Pink. In fact, hotels feature in most of my novels. The latest one, The Party, opens with a scene set in a room loosely based on a Premier Inn I once stayed in when attending a 50th birthday party. All the posh hotels had been booked up months in advance by efficient people, so my then-partner and I stayed in the cut-price option, which was staggeringly good value and included a breakfast in the nearby Little Chef: perfect hangover fodder. I’ve been fond of Premier Inns ever since.
For me, the best hotels are not the most expensive ones, but the ones that are generous in attitude and warm in manner. The staff are smiling and helpful. If something goes wrong, reception will try to fix it. There are tea bags and coffee sachets in your bedroom. A bottle of water you don’t have to pay for.
Individual shampoo and conditioner. Stories and quirkiness. Small things that add up to so much more than the sum of their parts. Taken together, these are the thoughtful touches that ensure you feel cocooned, that you can leave your daily woes at the front door to be taken care of by someone else.
Which brings me on to Claridge’s. As Claridge’s (telegraph. co.uk/tt-claridges) offers doubles from £684, excluding breakfast (£30pp). Suites from £1,680, including services of a personal butler, a bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne, chocolates, flowers and use of Burberry trench coats. Feature suites include complimentary airport transfers from London Heathrow.
soon as I walked off the busy London street into the art deco splendour of the Claridge’s lobby, with its black-andwhite marbled floor stretching out under my feet like a flattened humbug sweet, I felt as Audrey Hepburn did in Breakfast at Tiffany’s: as if nothing bad could ever happen here. I’ve long admired Claridge’s from afar. I’ve been shepherded into numerous suites by harassed PRs to interview actors such as Emily Blunt and Simon Pegg on press junkets, but I’ve never stayed overnight. Does it live up to the hype? Does it ever.
The receptionist was delightful.
The lift buttons were pressed by a smiling young man who insisted I sit on the sofa (a sofa inside a lift, I wanted to squeal to my younger self, forget the cereal boxes!).
And the smell was exquisite. Everywhere I walked, a fragrant floral bouquet trailed behind me like a lace bridal veil. The aroma was a mixture of crushed rose petals and expensive laundry detergent and I couldn’t get enough of it. In Claridge’s, even the air is five-star. No wonder the hotel became a haven for European royalty during the Second World War – the kings of Greece, Norway and Yugoslavia installed themselves here for the duration. Legend has it that Winston Churchill declared Suite 212 Yugoslavian territory and placed a
clump of Yugoslavian soil under the bed so that Crown Prince Alexander II could be born in his own country (finding independent verification for this proves tricky, but I like the image).
There was no soil underneath my bed, simply a mottled silvery carpet that managed to be simultaneously plush yet discreet. My suite was large, decorated in calming pinks and greys with the odd oriental silk-printed screen dotted about here and there. The flowers were impeccable white hydrangeas. It feels deliciously alluring – the kind of place you could happily bring your lover or pursue some discreetly illicit liaison without
having to worry about the outside world. The attention to detail was almost perfect: a Burberry raincoat hanging in the wardrobe for me to use during my stay; a fancy Dyson hairdryer; a bathrobe monogrammed with my initials. I got all the day’s newspapers by scanning the provided barcode into my phone.
I had a room service dinner, and ordered with a scattergun geographical approach from the extensive menu: sushi, something called a “confit d’aubergine” and hummus. Every single part of it was exceptionally good – and the hummus was not a dainty little dollop of chickpea but a giant bowl of tahini-rich goodness.
If I had one quibble, it was that although there was a Nespresso coffee machine in my room, there were no tea bags, which meant I had to go to the terrible effort of picking up the phone and ordering a pot when I wanted some tea. Given the cost of in-room dining, this seemed to unfairly marginalise tea drinkers. But it was the only thing I could find to complain about, and I include it here in the hope that you will not think I’m a soft touch when it comes to reviewing future hotels. Trust me: I will be utterly fearless in my reporting over the coming months – cereal boxes and all.