The Bloomsbury Hotel, London review
WHY STAY?
Because it’s as central as central can be in the capital, and fresh from a major refurbishment with a humming new bar.
WHY NOW?
This is the hot London reopening of the moment, but discreet enough – squirrelled away in bookish Bloomsbury – to make you look very clever to have found it.
WHAT IS IT?
A handsome, red-brick Sir Edwin Lutyens building dating from 1928, a short skip from Tottenham Court Road and its imminent Crossrail arrival.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Irish hotel group The Doyle Collection picked up the rundown Central Club – once the Edwardian-era hub for emancipated young women moving to London – in the late 1990s and have been refashioning it ever since. For this latest reveal, it has put on the razzle-dazzle with designer Martin Brudnizki’s show-stopping Coral Room. Known for his maximalist interiors – as seen at New York’s superb Beekman hotel – he hasn’t held back here, the double-height room flushed in a high-gloss peachy pink and lit by five enormous Murano chandeliers. On the walls, above curvaceous scallop-backed sofas, there are brilliant sketches from the design world’s current boy wonder, Luke Edward Hall.
SLEEP
The 153 rooms and 11 suites are gorgeous Deco-modern mash-ups with oxblood leather headboards, damson-velvet, mid-century chairs and heavily fringed light fittings, a look created by Michaelis Boyd (the Soho House Group; Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Hotel). For some casual reading before bed – over a pre-batched Coral Room Manhattan from the mini-bar – there are bound volumes of A History of The Bloomsbury Hotel (fun fact: it was modelled on Queen Mary’s doll’s house) and Poetry Portraits, with an introduction by Seamus Heaney’s widow Marie (the couple were hotel regulars and the wood-panelled library is now named after him).
EAT
The Coral Room buzzes from breakfast (garden-pea-and-feta smash on toasted sourdough) to nightfall, when it really comes into its own, serving small plates of fat devils on horseback and truffle-y beef carpaccio alongside an astonishing range of 29 English sparkling wines. For something more substantial, the Dalloway Terrace dishes up refined comfort food, including lobster mac’n’cheese and venison pie.
WHO COMES HERE?
European couples trying to squeeze a lifetime supply of purple Liberty bags into the lift. Pretty young things sipping even prettier Garden of England cocktails (Aperol, sherry, lavender, grapefruit and English fizz).
WE LIKE
This is a Russian doll of fun spaces: as the night goes on, head downstairs to the grown-up Bloomsbury Club Bar, where drinks are named after key members of the Bloomsbury Set.
WE DON’T LIKE
Knowing the original pool is boarded up beneath meeting rooms (although there are plans to reinstate it).
OUT AND ABOUT
Swerve the Oxford Street hordes and head a few squares east to London’s loveliest shopping secret: Lamb’s Conduit Street. There’s covetable menswear at Folk, modern art at the Langham Gallery, and re-issues of out-of-print works by early- 20th-century women at Persephone Books.
Address: The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3NN
Telephone: +44 20 7347 1000
Website: doylecollection.com/bloomsbury
Price: Double rooms from £295 on a bed and breakfast basis
Seating at The Coral Room
A cocktail menu
Bar seating
Artwork at The Bloomsbury
Inside The Coral Room
Interior details
A table setting
Cocktails lined up on the bar
