Despite its close proximity to bustling Oxford Street and winning the coveted Award of Excellence at the latest Afternoon Tea Awards, The Beaumont Hotel's Afternoon Tea, served in their glamorous Art Deco-styled lounge, The Gatsby's Room, feels like a secret spot well off the tourist trail even when they're fully booked and is all the more relaxing as a result. After a day of Mayfair shopping and a feeling of F.Scott Fitzgerald's oft-quoted line from The Great Gatsby, "There are only the pursued, the pursing, the busy and the tired," we settled into our cosy corner by a bookcase ready to be thoroughly restored. This sophisticated all-day dining space evoking Mayfair in the 1920s is at one with the ambient vintage-sounding jazz music playing at just the right level, while Gatsby's Room truly comes into its own towards the close of tea time and into cocktail hour when the lights are dimmed and the pianist arrives to further hypnotise you with the charm
Enter the lobby, after a personalised welcome by the doormen (they are all briefed every morning as to who will be arriving) and you crisscross its polished floor, pas.
From a storied Whitehall building reborn as one of London’s most opulent places to stay to sibling properties opening in Norfolk and Surrey, these are the coolest new hotels for a winter stay, says hotel expert Ianthe Butt
From a storied Whitehall building reborn as one of London’s most opulent places to stay to sibling properties opening in Norfolk and Surrey, these are the coolest new hotels for a winter stay, says hotel expert Ianthe Butt