The Royal Suite at The Dorchester has just opened and it’s billed as the perfect London nest for celebs, crowned heads and eastern potentates. The cost of an overnight stay — with breakfast — starts at £30,000. Meanwhile, it’s got little me.
It is, of course, enormous, occupying a whole corner of the eighth floor. But the important thing is that it’s got a butler to attend to the inmates. Ours, named Sean, is charming, but then so are all the people who bring breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, for I intend not to budge from here until I absolutely have to.
The friend who came round to help me drink the champagne said, as soon as she arrived: “My Fair Lady!” And she’s right; the black and white marble floor and striped pale pastel pink and green walls mean the look is halfway between the racing scene in the film and a box of Ladurée macrons. There’s some elegant plasterwork too.
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The colour diversifies in some rooms, like the study, which has a red lacquer desk, dark green walls and a glass pot of boiled sweets, which I very much enjoyed. Here, you can sit at the desk, which has a useful pair of binoculars in case you want a closeup of the view, and feel like the magnate in Citizen Kane. To emphasise the ‘Royal’ in the suite description, there are signed prints of a couple of the king’s competent watercolours; one, of Highgrove, hangs in the guest loo.
The views rival the one from halfway up the London Eye — Hyde Park from one side, Westminster Abbey and Battersea power station from another. My daughter, 19, was the first to arrive, because there is no point in staying in a Royal Suite unless you show it off. All she could say was: “Oh my Lord”. The drawing room is filled with light and there are high ceilings (mirrored, excitingly, in the case of the dining room); about eight rooms (the space given over to the wardrobe may count as one) and a kitchen with an intimidating cooker where my daughter warmed up a pizza.
As for the bathroom, it too is huge and marbelled, with a Japanese lavatory — i.e. a nice warm seat whose cover springs up as you approach — and a glorious big bathtub. I occupied just one bedroom but there’s access to three others. Here and in the sitting room there are screens the size of small cinemas, and a nice young man will come and help you try to put a film on.
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It’s designed by the veteran Pierre-Yves Rochon, whose other projects include Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. The hotel website tells us that ‘a 1950s spirit runs throughout, with pastel tones and floral references taking their cue from Hyde Park’.
The suite is indeed big on hydrangeas. The top tip is that an enormous single head in a vase, preferably very pale pink or white, and preferably in a line down the table, will work wonders. But there’s also an enormous Edwardian palm in the dining room which, with the garden trellis wallpaper, has quite the horticultural feel. The other 1950s touch is that there are lots of mirrored cabinets.
Let’s not forget the coffee table books. I now know where these things go, which is onto actual coffee tables in the Royal Suite. No normal house would have room for them, but here they are right at home: huge art books on Raphael, Ernest Chaplet and Cecil Beaton, and whimsical ones on London style and men’s fashion. In the office there are decorative editions of Jane Austen, as well as the cocktail book. I may be the first and last to actually read them.
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I was booked for dinner at the Dorchester Grill, but I have a little over 24 hours here and I am jolly well not going to waste it. So the Grill came to me: asparagus soup, fish pie, pud, and very good it was. So did afternoon tea, which I took with a friend, and an excellent breakfast in the morning – sausage, bacon, the works. There are few better places to hold court.
Is it worth £30,000? Oh, don’t be silly. But the danger is that you could so easily feel at home; I could roost here for weeks on end, wallowing in the light and space. It’s preposterous, obviously. But boy, it’s fun for 24 hours.
