Books, Arts & Manners: Room at the Inn

HOTELS HAVE always played a great part in my life. My earliest memory of one is when I was taken by my parents to the Grande Bretagne in 1945, at the time the grandest hotel in Athens. When the Germans occupied Greece in 1941, they billeted their high command in the GB, leaving Athenian high lifers to fend for themselves. After the liberation, Churchill stayed there, the Greek government having concluded it was the least likely place for Winnie to stop a Communist bullet.

Although the hotel had taken its share of pounding in four years of war, I’ll never forget its grand chandeliers, its imposing salons, the liveried waiters. And the food. It tasted like the proverbial manna from you know where, especially as I hadn’t tasted butter or a sweet in four long years.

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HOTELS HAVE always played a great part in my life. My earliest memory of one is when I was taken by my parents to the Grande Bretagne in 1945, at the time the grandest hotel in Athens. When the Germans occupied Greece in 1941, they billeted their high command in the GB, leaving Athenian high lifers to fend for themselves. After the liberation, Churchill stayed there, the Greek government having concluded it was the least likely place for Winnie to stop a Communist bullet.

Although the hotel had taken its share of pounding in four years of war, I’ll never forget its grand chandeliers, its imposing salons, the liveried waiters. And the food. It tasted like the proverbial manna from you know where, especially as I hadn’t tasted butter or a sweet in four long years.