Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories

I found this book to be rather curious. Obviously, there is not, nor ever has been a "Hotel London". I thought the book might be an architectural history of the English palace hotel genre. It is not. Instead, it is an exploration of the cultural layerings embodied within that genre, generously illustrated with various historical encounters and observations by individuals of the nineteenth century and those of succeeding generations. In terms of graphic illustrations, there are some, but not many, and they are all in black-and-white. This is far from a coffee table book, but would be enjoyable on a long train journey.

Barbara Black's exploration of the nineteenth-century British hospitality industry helps us understand Victorians as nation-builders and storytellers. The third book in her ambitious trilogy, "Hotel London" caps a remarkable survey of the peculiarly English institutions and literature we thought we knew well but which, under Black's scrutiny, offer themselves up for deeper, more complex, and downright entertaining analysis. I'll never look at hotel linens quite the same way! Fantastic work.