Durrants Hotel
THERE’S A DEARTH of affordable hotels of genuine character in Central London. Not everybody can or will splash out on the likes of Claridge’s, The Connaught or The Ritz. Does that mean the out-of-towner should resign himself to the bland amenities of a link in an international chain? By no means. As long as Durrants is in the picture, he’ll have an experience that’s arguably even more ‘English’ than any of those obtainable in grander and more cosmopolitan establishments. There’s a charm in that certainty that money can’t buy in this cookie-cutter world.
Secreted behind the Wallace Collection on a tributary of Marylebone High Street, Durrants is likely to have been frequented by Jane Marple or, a couple of generations earlier, by an archdeacon up from Barchester in a novel by Anthony Trollope. Internally, it’s arranged exactly like a railway carriage of the pre-Beeching era. A lateral corridor gives onto any number of small spaces: nooks, crannies and snugs pressed into service as bars, lounges and private dining rooms. In spite of a recent sprucing that saw a patina of Pimlico Road chic applied to a foundation of knotty wood panelling, prints, and oil paintings of questionable merit, Durrants retains an invincible air of shabby gentility. It’s exactly the kind of place in which I’d like to hole up on the ‘Foggy Day in London Town’ written and composed by George and Ira Gershwin.
See also: Brown’s Hotel, Dukes
