Inside London’s most mysterious new bar

The recently opened Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) harbours a secret bar, open only to guests of the hotel. It’s not the first hidden hotel bar

( just a block away, Great Scotland Yard’s whisky bar, Sibin, lies behind a secret door, while another famous hotel has a VIP bar so hush-hush that guests are sworn to secrecy). But no other is more deserving of a furtive speakeasy, because its home – the magnificent OWO – was once a hive of spies. In fact, there were so many in the building – both

MI5 and MI6 were formed here – that they had their own low-key entrance, still known as Spies Entrance. Colourful spymaster Mansfield Smith-Cumming was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s M, while many wartime spies, such as the charming, daring and ultimately tragic Christine Granville, are remembered in the names of the hotel’s suites.

You can’t just wander into the unmarked Spy Bar – you’d never find it, for a start. The surreptitious subterranean bar, open until 2am and set in a former basement interrogation room, breathes an atmosphere of late-night assignations, cloak-and-dagger plans and secret forms of communication in a brick-lined, low-lit burgundy velvet burrow very different from the pomp and splendour of the rooms above. Fleming, who worked in the building for the Naval Intelligence Division and is said to have thought up the James Bond novels here, is remembered in the Spy Bar’s most striking feature: an Aston Martin. Above the beautifully lit bar, whose front resembles a cabinet of secretive map drawers, a sleek Aston Martin DB5 – or rather one half of it – stretches across the wall: it’s the carbon fibre body from the stunt car used in No Time to Die. It’s a fitting spot for a martini – shaken not stirred, of course.

Doubles from £1,100 (020 3907 7500; raffles.com).