For our latest issue, a special edition with the theme of Under One Sky, we asked our favourite globetrotters 21 questions in order to open up their address books in support of the travel industry. The idea is to shine a light on businesses big and small. Here, Steve King our editor-at-large waxes lyrical about his favourite places on the planet, from Calcutta to Cambridge.
Place Dauphine
Getty Images
Your favourite small and secret hotel?
‘It used to be the Hôtel Henri IV, at the Pont Neuf end of the triangular raked-gravel paradise that is the Place Dauphine on the Ile de la Cité in Paris. But I understand it closed some years ago, another splendid bit of unrepentant, unreconstructed Paris overtaken by the irresistible march of progress – or trampled underfoot in the unseemly stampede of money. In truth, it was probably never quite as small or secret or so squishily ripe with romance as I remember it to have been.’
The Glenburn Penthouse drawing room
Ana Lui
A great little find away from the crowds?
‘The Glenburn Penthouse, Calcutta. Crowds don’t get greater than those of Calcutta, and little places to get away from the crowds don’t get greater than this one, an impeccable sanctuary of almost-but-not-quite colonial camp set high above the urgent, vivid, teeming streets of this magnificent city.’
The verandah at Mandarin Oriental Bangkok
Your favourite classic hotel?
‘Just the one? Ah. Well, then, it can only be TheCarlyleNewYorkClaridge’sLondonTheSavoyLondonTheRitzLondonandLeBristolParisMandarinOrientalBangkokThePeninsulaHongKongRafflesSingaporeandHoteldesBerguesGeneva.’
If you could have one feast right now?
‘A guilty secret: I couldn’t care less about food. A toasted sandwich is fancy enough for my simple tastes. I am a drinkie, not a foodie. Put it this way, if I can order the grog, you can order whatever you want for dinner, for both of us. So… Here we are once more at Le Grand Véfour in Paris – the joint is looking especially fine this evening – shall we get things under way with a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne – the 1994 will do nicely, thank you very much – and as many oysters as you can bear to swallow?’
One thing you’ve never told anyone about your travels?
‘I weep every time I go abroad. Usually on the return trip, the homeward leg. The tears I cry are good tears, though. Happy tears, tears of joy, of gratitude, of wonder, generally shed silently, discreetly and briefly. Still, a bit disconcerting for anyone who has to sit next to me on a plane. Never understood it. Yet to get over it. “Laugh, and the world laughs with you,” as the fellow says. “Cry, and you just wet your face.”’
The book you read that inspired you to travel?
‘Of all the questions on the list, this is the one that I found hardest to answer. I ran through dozens, many dozens, of possibilities. None of them seemed entirely true – not untrue, exactly, just not quite right. Finally I realised why. It was not some masterpiece of fiction or paradigm of travel writing encountered on my parents’ bookshelves at a tender age that made me dream of faraway places. It was an atlas. An ordinary household atlas. A work of purest enchantment and potent juju. A book of spells. Recite the names aloud – Addis Ababa, Andamooka, Cape Fear, Cap-Ferrat, Kathmandu, Timbuktu. These are more than labels, they are incantations, invocations, passwords to other worlds.’
The film whose location blew you away?
‘I cannot think of a film that ever really captured or reflected or articulated my own sense of a particular place. I love Federico Fellini’s Rome, for instance, but it is not mine. Woody Allen’s New York likewise. Wim Wenders’s magnificent visions of the Australian desert where I grew up seem similarly alien to me. It is slightly shaming to admit this, but possibly the most beautifully realised and convincing cinematic version of a city that I know a little and love is the nocturnal Los Angeles of Michael Mann’s Collateral. Something to do with the way he radically extends the camera’s depth of field, so that things that are very far away seem just as sharp and present as things in the middle distance and things that are very near – a trick that photographer friends have tried to explain to me but I fail fully to understand. Whatever he did, it looks incredible, and seems to me somehow true to the spirit of the place.’
The rooftops of Trinity Street
Alessandra Spairani
A place you fell in love?
‘Top floor, B staircase, Pembroke College, Cambridge. By an incredible stroke of random good luck I had a set of rooms there in my final year, with my own kitchen and dining room – the extra space and privacy were an almost unheard of luxury. Not even the organ scholar’s room was that big. A babe lair. A lair which, fortunately for me, the babe I subsequently married happened to like hanging out in, too. At night, when the bells on the adjacent chapel by Sir Christopher Wren would chime, I would whisper in her ear: “Ah, Sophia Loren!” Heaven only knows why she put up with me then, and still does now.’
Which form of travel puts a spring in your step?
‘The tiny narrow-gauge train – ex-Orient Express stock, all polished brass, dark panelling and forest-green leather – that makes its slow-motion way from Montreux to Gstaad. You could walk faster. No Champagne trolley if you walk, though.’
The best shop?
‘My attitude towards shopping is much like my attitude towards food: indifferent. I have no money. I cannot afford to buy things. And even if I had money to buy things, I doubt I would bother. A possible exception: there is a slight, ancient, heavily bespectacled fellow named Amit Malji who sells vintage natural pearls from the Persian Gulf, a long since exhausted source, in the jewellery district of Mumbai, near the Mumba Devi temple. The pearls in which he trades – and who knows how he gets his hands on them – are all but unobtainable elsewhere. Cartier is his main client. He keeps the pearls in squares of cloth which he unknots for the prospective buyer between crossed legs on an uneven wooden floor. They tumble down and find their level with a gentle rattle – almost a chuckle – like lustrous planets, a shower of shooting stars.’
A song that reminds you of holidays?
‘My head is full of songs, bursting, splitting at the seams. But not in the way that the question supposes. Maybe, if I were going on holiday and wanted a song to get me sort of fired up, then I would put on ‘Louisiana’ by the Walkmen. Even if I were not going anywhere near Louisiana. The sweetly lurching groove of those first few bars, effortless, sexy, suggestive of moving through flat space and humid heat – and then the gorgeous, spirit-lifting moment a minute or so in when Hamilton Leithauser sings: “Just sleeping in the sun… hey!” before the rhythm changes and the wild mariachi trumpet stuff blasts off. Heaven.’
Your favourite place in the world?
‘A psychic space as much as a physical one. Nice view, pleasant company, deadlines met, a glass of something chilled to hand. A contented cat also to hand. Strong but indirect natural light. Plants, mirrors, cushions, a careworn carpet underfoot. The sound, present but not intrusive, of other people, their talk, their comings and goings, perhaps of traffic, though not enough to trouble the cat.’
The destination you want to visit next?
‘A question people ask me quite often and to which I have never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. I don’t really mind where I go next, as long as it is not to jail or an intensive-care unit. Everywhere is interesting, don’t you think?’
Most memorable view?
‘On a day flight from Tokyo to London over Siberia. It is not really one view but a vast panorama that unfurls over the course of several hours.’
Your evergreen staycation spot?
‘Home. Glasgow. A leisurely walk from my flat to the municipal swimming pool. A great walk, as it happens, through some of the more architecturally notable neighbourhoods of this colossally underrated place. Maybe drop in and pick up some guitar strings and have a wee blether with Jimmy at Jimmy Egypt and Sons Musical Instruments – Glasgow is the most rock’n’roll city in the UK and he knows everyone. Possibly a drink or two at the Kelvingrove Café afterwards (the café bit is ironic). And lunch at Rogano: lobster thermidor and a bottle of Chablis. Then a taxi home.’
Your holiday look?
‘Bespectacled: see below.’
The items always in your holiday wardrobe?
‘Really there is only one: a spare pair of spectacles. A trip that you cannot see is not worth taking.’
Your washbag essential?
‘Savlon, Elastoplast and a teabag of Darjeeling tea. It seems to be increasingly uncommon to find decent tea in even the best hotel rooms. Why keep a teabag in my washbag? A good question to which I have no good answer. Force of habit, I suppose. At least I remember it is there.’
Your trusted suitcase brand?
‘Aiguille Alpine, a rucksack maker in Cumbria. It produces the simplest, sturdiest and, in my opinion, most beautiful rucksacks available today. Each one is made to order, afresh, anew. You are under no obligation to do so, but you can have them create something completely bespoke. I have three, in different sizes, all tailored to suit my height, my whims and my aversion to clips, zips, pockets and any other jangly, dangly or extraneous components that do not absolutely have to be there. When I arrive at hotels, people almost always ask me: “Where is the rest of your luggage?” To which I long ago came up with the stock reply: “I don’t travel with luggage, only this rucksack, which is my apartment.”’
GLOVES OFF! If you were forced to answer, which hotel or travel experience is your favourite?
‘I live in Glasgow but keep a flat in London, too. Once I locked myself out of the London flat – must, I realised, have left the keys in a tray when going through security in Fiumicino Airport in Rome. It was late when I got to London, too late to ring anyone about a spare set of keys. Nothing to be done. In an absurd flounce that I could ill afford, I made my way directly to Claridge’s. Where I was greeted like a favourite son just returned from the war, pampered like a pharaoh, spoilt like a brat and generally made to feel as though every single aspect of the human condition, and mine in particular, was not merely satisfactory but supremely so.’
Read our full review of Claridge’s here
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