St. Ermin’s Hotel, London

Stuffy, staid English-ness? Yes, St. Ermin’s is just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park and the ceiling lobby is finished in full on Rococo plasterwork rivaling the Sistine Chapel’s decoration. And true, it does feel like Mr. Darcy might walk down the grand staircase at any moment. However, this London hotel is much more James Bond than Jane Austen. Literally.

During World War II, Ian Fleming worked in this building—it was a convenient annex for nearby SIS, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. Even before the war, thanks to its location near so many government and intelligence organizations, MI6, MI5, the Naval Intelligence Division and even Sir Winston Churchill regularly met in the hotel’s Caxton Bar. (In case you’re wondering, Churchill drank champagne.) Rumor has it a tunnel runs underneath the grand staircase—the same one Mr. Darcy could descend—all the way to the Houses of Westminster. In 1940, the St. Ermin’s was where Churchill held the meeting that laid the groundwork for the founding of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which conducted specialized, covert operations and was for a time headquartered on an entire floor here.

Today, the Caxton Bar is busy with couples, business travelers and fashionistas rather than spies. Or so I think. The rooms converted to offices during WWII have long been converted back to rooms and suites. Still, the hotel celebrates its spy-ful past. The art collection includes framed pages of what looks like misprinted Shakespeare verses. Odd, I thought. But British humor can be perplexing. Finally, intrigued enough to ask at the front desk, I was told these pages aren’t misprints at all. Real messages are hidden in the misprinting, which was a way of communicating during WWII. Families with kids can get a St. Ermin’s Secret Agent Package, which sends kids around the hotel and neighborhood on spy missions.

While I’m a Bond fan and a sucker for almost anything that hints at international intrigue, you needn’t geek out on this kind of stuff yourself to enjoy St. Ermin’s. Its location is enough to recommend it—Piccadilly, Buckingham Palace, the Cabinet War Rooms, Big Ben, the Thames, St. James’s Park and Trafalgar Square are all no more than a 10 minute walk away. The St. James’s Park tube stop is one minute away. But St. Ermin’s isn’t just centrally located.

Last summer, the property finished an 18 month, $50 million renovation that, like artist Takashi Murakami’s collaborations with Louis Vuitton, manages to wonderfully meld whimsy with old school elegance. In the library, red-pleated lampshades are perched atop a Porta Romana base of webbed duck feet. In addition to the historic coded communications, the art collection—extensive, with original pieces hanging not only in the main public spaces but also in the corridors—includes prints (some abstract, some realistic) of plants, leaves and flowers and also framed origami clothes made from maps of the area. As your heels click on the lobby’s white marble floor, you can’t help but smile.  All hotels should have a sense of humor like this. The terracotta wallpaper is courtesy of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Purple orchids in the lobby are courtesy of Mother Nature. Many of the 331 rooms (including 41 suites) have poster beds and claw foot tubs.

It’s part English grand house and part Grand Tour and was rightfully included on Conde Nast’s “Hot List” as one of the world’s best new hotel openings last year.

For dinner, the hotel’s Caxton Bar does modern interpretations of traditional British food and sources ingredients as locally as possible. Any honey used – whether in a honey glazed fig, goat cheese and shaved fennel salad, a honey roasted squash with baby beetroot or honey pannacotta – is uber-local. How so? The hotel has its own colony of 200,000 Buckfast honeybees, which reside in six custom built hives, three of which can be seen from the third floor. It’s not as exciting as a ride on the London Eye or a trip up to the observation deck at the Shard but with urban bee keeping just taking off, spending a few minutes watching the bees coming and going is almost as novel.  And then you can walk down to the Caxton Bar and order its signature cocktail, the Bowler Hat—Sipsmith gin, honey and lemon juice.