CHRISTOPHER MATTHEW
WRITER & BROADCASTER
A DIFFERENT WORLD: Stories of Great Hotels.
Paddington Press, 1974.
The world of the great hotels is a different world from the one we live in. It is a world of impeccable taste and exquisite food, of perfectly chosen décor and of unspoken but unshakeable assumptions about the proper way of doing things. And, most of all, the greatest hotels are those that have long and distinguished histories.
A Different World sets out to tell of the glorious past and elegant present of some fifty greatest hotels in the world. It is a personal tour, an evocation of some of the last outposts of the kind of grandeur thought to have vanished in the 1920s.
There are stories of the great hoteliers, the great concierges, the great restaurants, and, most of all, the distinguished guests: the Dukes and Duchesses, Kings and Queens, the fabulously rich and the internationally famous.
It is they, as much as the great food and flawless service, that make the great hotels a different world.
Reviews:
Delightful piece of escapism into the world of gracious living. Sunday Times
The book for sybarites this winter. Valerie Jenkins, Evening Standard
This gorgeous gazeteer. Alexander Walker, Birmingham Post
If you're looking for a little light reading on the subject of hotel addiction, you could do a lot worse than A Different World. William Trevor, The Guardian
All the upper two per cent of human life is here. The Scotsman
A lavish, entertaining coffee-table volume. The Wall Street Journal
A wonderful present for those who, in more affluent times, were or might have been guests at Claridge's, the Gritti Palace, The Ritz, L'Ousteau de Beaumaniere, the Byblos. The Observer
