The Ritz Hotel is a cake on Piccadilly made of stone; inside this cake, Lady Thatcher died. Some think it is tragic that she died here in the cake of stone; I do not. It has Italian men in tailcoats, a gifted pastry chef, and views of Green Park; she chose, I suspect, the ultimate free-market death. I would have chosen the Connaught for my slightly more social-democratic death, but this is suitable for Lady Thatcher; it is for hot blonde chicks who love swagger and flounce, and imagine a country wrapped in chintz and whisky and power. Lady Thatcher was a girl first, a politician later; her closest twin is surely the novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, who writes about ambition, betrayal and sex, and who, if she were a hotel, would be the Ritz Hotel.
Inside, it is fascinatingly pink.
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