London hotels with a literary twist

There’s something rather wonderful about the idea of settling down for the night in the spot where one of your favourite writers once slept, played or dreamed up a plot. There are a range of hotels across London with a vast array of bookish associations: some have played host to writers both famous and infamous, while others have been commemorated in novels, poems and short stories. Their present-day owners are all too happy to show off their literary heritage, should you ask nicely. Here are six with the most interesting tales to tell.

Hazlitt’s

There are few London hotels with so existential a literary connection as Hazlitt’s on Frith Street in Soho. Its carefully restored Georgian townhouses contain 6 Frith Street, where the essayist and critic William Hazlitt lived – and died – when it was a boarding house. His resourceful landlady, keen to relet his room, kept his corpse under the bed for a time before it could be buried in nearby St Anne’s churchyard.