Once you’ve been greeted and waved inside by an amiable, top-hatted doorman, Gatsby’s Room, located on the ground floor of five-star, Mayfair hotel The Beaumont, doesn’t appear out of time, so much as benignly indifferent to it. Lined with vintage bookshelves, paintings of man and hound, photographic portraits of well-heeled patrons, and harbouring a grand piano in the corner, the spacious interior has an air of meticulous leisure.
For all the period 1920s decor, and the exquisite futurism of the art deco fittings, it makes you feel very much in the moment. Accommodated for. Hammer is here to partake in afternoon tea with Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson. Mikael has dressed for the occasion, swapping the Jethro Tull t-shirt he was wearing earlier at the somewhat more rock’n’roll Sanctum hotel for a plain black shirt, but this isn’t an entirely out-of-the-ordinary experience for either of them.
