Is there anything more beautiful than a Rolls-Royce?

I am in the south of France in the Maybourne Rivera: a mad, modernist hotel on a rock above Monaco filled with cashmere blankets, and beds. The cloud rolls in and Monaco disappears like an eye closing, and I am glad. Monaco is a land of defibrillators at bus stops and street signs that say ‘Prada’. It smells of petrol and tax avoidance. Far above, this is the sort of hotel that creates its own reality, in which nothing can harm you, which is the point of any great hotel. It’s hard to write well about luxury because it numbs you into a state of infancy. By the end of a trip on the Orient Express, for instance, I could not find my slippers in a cabin that was less than 30 square feet. But I can rouse myself to call the Maybourne Riviera a soothing fortress, much like the Rolls-Royce Phantom.

We are not in South of France by mistake.