A family affair | 25 July 2019

The Goring is a tiny grand hotel near Victoria Station and the Queen’s garden wall. Victoria is not pleasant — traffic fumes —but this only makes the Goring more determined to be the grandest of all London’s tiny grand hotels. That it is in the wrong place — it should be in Mayfair in 1858 — makes it more histrionic. It is another daydream made of class anxiety; another hotel that voted for Brexit.

It was built in 1910, the first hotel, says the website, to be entirely ensuite. Did the Savoy use buckets? Its windows are fantastically clean, which must be agonising this close to Victoria Coach Station. It has two doormen dressed in red and gold, like Jewish sofas. The Goring is covered in bunting, like a fête that never stops. In the lobby there are mirrors and chequered marble floors, and cuddly sheep called Barbara. This is a family-run hotel.