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Hotel Babylon
Hotel Babylon
Oct 31, 2024 5:44 PM

Author:Imogen Edwards-Jones

Hotel Babylon

'Something strange occurs to guests as soon as they check in. Even if in real life they are perfectly well-mannered, decent people with proper balanced relationships, as soon as they spin through the revolving hotel doors the normal rules of behaviour no longer seem to apply.'

All of the following is true.Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. All the anecdotes, the stories, the characters, the situations, the highs, the lows, the scams, the drugs, the misery, the love, the death and the insanity are exactly as was told by Anonymous - someone who has spent his whole career working in hotels at the heart of London's luxury hotel industry. However, for legal reasons, the stories now take place in a fictitious hotel known as Hotel Babylon. More than a decade is compressed into a day. Everything else is as it should be. The rich spend money, the hotel makes money and the chambermaids still fight the bellboys over a two-pound coin.It's just another twenty-four hours in an expensive London hotel.

Reviews

Informative, disgusting and utterly fascinating

—— Closer

Reading Hotel Babylon is like mainlining Popbitch

—— Metro

A 5-Star read. Imogen Edwards-Jones takes readers on a brilliant romp that's just as luxurious as the presidential suite and definitely a whole lot funnier

—— Candace Bushnell

Makes shock revelation after shock revelation

—— Daily Mail

Fascinating

—— Daily Telegraph

Explosive

—— Sun

Five stars for excess... amusing and appalling

—— Sunday Telegraph

An eye-opener...with plenty of tips for the frequent traveller

—— The Economist

Stuff Matters has reminded me that historians can spend too much time looking at what people have said and written, and not enough on the materials with which we have built modern society. I now understand why epochs in human history are defined by the stuff we have used

—— Dan Snow

An ode to material science. Miodownik delves into the molecules and history of metal, paper, concrete and chocolate, finding poetry and beauty in the details. It's also about the ingenuity of humankind, the unique ability of humans to understand the materials around us, and to manipulate them

—— Alice Roberts

A masterful page-turner that warns of a hundred worst case scenarios you've never thought of, while also - thank goodness - offering bold and clever strategies to thwart them

—— PW Singer, author of Wired for War

Future Crimes is the Must Read Book of the Year.

—— Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell is Human

More than a tribute to a rare and doughty tribe. If hills could speak, this is surely a tale the fells would tell

—— Horatio Clare , Telegraph

An enlightening, exquisitely written account... I was beguiled by this book, an eloquent love-letter to a cherished way of life

—— Brian Viner , Daily Mail

May well do for sheep what Helen Macdonald did for hawks

—— Stephen Moss , Guardian

Punchy, well-read and occasionally lyrical... a glorious book, alive with the author's voice, which is strong and individual, as befits a man who makes a living in this ancient but precarious way. Most striking is its honesty

—— Herald Scotland

Rebanks offers a fascinating account of his life in farming that is in equal parts memoir, social commentary and procedural. Even for the most committed urbanite, it's a brilliant read

—— Alexander Larman , Observer

James Rebanks's unsentimental, sharply detailed memoir about his life as a shepherd gripped me from the first page

—— Moira Hodgson , Wall Street Journal

A timely and important book, with flashes of beauty in its spare and honest prose

—— Sadie Jones, author of The Outcast

In James Rebanks we hear a new voice from the fells. The toil and the beauty in The Shepherd's Life are utterly compelling

—— Nicholas Crane, author of Coast

A vivid, honest, unforgettably written account not just of one shepherd's year, but of an ancient way of life

—— Lucy Dillon, author of A Hundred Pieces of Me

The Shepherd's Life is a reader's delight. No tourist wandering the iconic Lake District is Rebanks; coming from centuries of farmers he is as 'hefted' to the fells as the Herdwick sheep he keeps. He lives, breathes and works his landscape - which gives him an inside edge as sharp as shears over most of the flock of current countryside-writers. Rebanks has written a marvellous autobiography - of himself, his family, and the hills themselves. For they are indivisible

—— John Lewis-Stempel, author of Meadowland

What came through was the stolid humility, gentle stubbornness and genuine care you need to live this life. Many books are written about a thing but this book is of a thing and is valuable for it

—— Cynan Jones, author of The Dig

The Shepherd's Life is that rare thing, a well-written book about the life of the land by a man who gets his living from the land. It's a paean for a peopled landscape, and a powerful counterblast to the doleful environmentalism that would empty our land of its people

—— Philip Walling, author of Counting Sheep

Beautifully written

—— Alan Cumming, actor and author of Not My Father's Son

Irreverent, honest, achingly beautiful and totally authentic. Rebanks challenges us to understand what would be lost if no one remembers the seasons of a shepherd's life or the culture of sheep farming. His joy is as contagious as his writing

—— Linda Lear, author of Beatrix Potter: The extraordinary life of a Victorian genius

Truly extraordinary... written with a mastery of vivid, concrete detail that makes you gasp

—— WI Life

A wonderful book which will surely become a Lake District classic. Powerfully written and unflinchingly honest, it provides a vivid insight into the realities of hill farming life

—— Angus J L Winchester, Professor of Local & Landscape History, Lancaster University

A gorgeous book, unsentimental but exultant, vivid and profound, and a fierce defense of small-scale farming

—— Maryn McKenna , National Geographic

A beautifully told tale suffused by a profound sense of belonging and a clear-eyed love of the land and its people.

—— Sunday Morning Herald

His prose is earthed and conversational; it feels as if you're leaning over a gate, listening to his ruminations. The book exudes tough passion, and a sense of belonging and love that holds you rapt to the very last line

—— Intelligent Life

What a great idea this is...a masterpiece of time, distance, palm trees, frosty mornings, lofty ambition and self-effacing charm

—— Monocle

A fascinating book that ought to put flight in a new light for many people

—— Nautilus International Telegraph

Masterly, beautifully written book

—— Alexander Frater , The Times Literary Supplement

Alive with the joy of everything from takeoff…to the dream-like quality of flight itself

—— Tony Parsons , GQ

Marvelously literate… If [Vanhoenacker’s] book had been around in the mid-‘80s, I suspect I wouldn’t have been afraid to fly in the first place

—— Dwight Garner , New York Times

In the pages of his book…you will find yourself agreeing that “The ordinary things we thought we knew…becomes more beautiful”

—— Michael Kerr , Independent

Commendably, the technical aspects are outlined in a straightforward, accessible manner, while overall the book demonstrates that aviation has lost none of its appeal

—— Good Book Guide

A lovely memoir

—— Gulliver , The Economist

For anyone who wishes to get a pilot’s insight into what it’s really like to notch up thousands of miles and hours… – you won’t find a much more passionate account than this one

—— Elinor Evans , Flyer

[Vanhoenacker] invites readers with him on to the flight deck, describing the minutiae of flight with a degree of detail that would be nerdy were it not for the poetry of his writing

—— Tom Robbins , Financial Times

As you battle with the cramped legroom in economy class, [Vanhoenacker’s] view of aviation may just transport you

—— Robbie Millen , The Times

[An] elegant meditation on being an airline pilot

—— John Lanchester , Guardian

[Vanhoenacker] wants us to fall in love with flying again

—— Damian Whitworth , The Times

A highly readable account, as moving as it is unexpected, of what flying means, by an airline pilot with a gift for words. Antoine de Saint-Exupery lives again

—— Economist

[This] airborne odyssey of a book is enthralling, from the physics of lift and the vicissitudes of flight paths to the aura borealis and the pristine sunsets. Read it and you’ll request a window seat every time you fly

—— Caroline Sanderson , Sunday Express

This mesmerising book will make you view the world differently

—— Helen Davies , The Times

Few people have captured the fascination of flying as well as U.S. journalist and pilot Mark Vanhoenacker.

—— Lufthansa Magazine

Delves deeply into the magic and beauty of flight. An elegant writer with a sharp eye and a literary mind, Vanhoenacker… Writes about flight on an emotional and spiritual level, how it makes him feel to soar above the Earth while watching the landscape pass below.

—— Kent German , CNET

He spins a curious and articulate exploration of flying.

—— Guardian

Vanhoenacker’s calm and scrupulously composed prose style is soothing… Vanhoenacker manages to make flying seem exciting again.

—— Alexander Larman , Observer

A beautiful, contemplative book… What Skyfaring gives is something we need: elevation; another perspective… Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.

—— Nicholas Lezard , Guardian

Here is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers all too easily take for granted.

—— I

A writer of exquisite prose, fascinated both by the technical and mystical aspects of flight... In every line of this lovely book, there is something beautiful and strange.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

This is the best book I've ever read on the subject... It's one of the best travel books I've ever read... Superb.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

An unexpectedly lyrical memoir on a fascinating subject… Skyfaring will give you a delightfully fresh perspective on the wonder that is air travel.

—— Kate Slotover , Riddle

It’s calm, poetic and riveting… Fascinating.

—— National Geographic Traveller

He writes beautifully about the strange, alien world of high-altitude passenger flights… Vanhoenacker loves flying and communicates beautifully its marvels and mysteries.

—— Peter McKay , Daily Mail, Book of the Year

I loved this fabulous insight into the secret world of the sky.

—— Melanie Reid , The Times, Book of the Year

A brilliant, chunky, study of genes.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

This book captures the progression from that intuitive sense of genetics to its birth as a veritable science and, for better or for worse, its evolution into a powerful tool… The book ends not with a conclusion, but with a feeling of anticipation… In many ways, The Gene is a call for caution and for a thoughtful consideration of the possibilities that progress may bring… When genes become tools, what will those tools be used for? As we try to answer that question, Mukherjee’s book asks us to carefully look back before we continue to move forward

—— Claire McDaniel & Daniel Marchalik , British Medical Journal

A comprehensive – and gripping – history of the gene

—— Emma Finamore , Memo
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