Beaverbrook Townhouse is London's loveliest new hotel opening

Many years ago, I stayed in a themed hotel in Walt Disney World in Florida. Designed to evoke the atmosphere of the Louisiana bayou, Port Orleans had plantation-style buildings with wrought-iron balconies, gas-lamp-lit riverside walkways and a French Quarter restaurant. Beaverbrook Town House is no Port Orleans, but it did come to mind when I was told that each of the hotel’s 14 rooms pay homage to a London theatre. So in the panelled lobby outside our room – The Garrick – there is an old seating plan of the West End theatre. Inside framed pictures include a portrait of 18th-century actor David Garrick, a Twenties Garrick Gaieties poster and a 1958 photograph of the exterior (advertising the charmingly named, long-forgotten musical Share my Lettuce).

In the wrong hands, the London theatre theme could have been a little crass. Luckily, any hint of hokiness is balanced by the gorgeousness of the room’s interior. Nicola Harding, the winner of House & Garden’s 2021 Pineapple Award for Hotel Design, has fast established a reputation for her masterful use of colour and few others could carry off the bold combination of purples, pinks and blue hues with grass green and red. Nor has she skimped on decorative details, so there are lashings of Samuel & Son passementerie and patterned lampshades by the likes of Vaughan and Rosi de Ruig dotted round the room. A moodily dark bathroom with a medley of tiles in turquoise, aqua and teal completes the dramatic look.

Nicola has cited The Great Gatsby as one of the influences for the hotel’s interiors. The glass and brass bar cart next to the purple velvet sofa may be very 2020s, but crystal glasses and decanters and a leather lidded ice box introduce a note of 1920s decadence. There is a marbled-paper letter rack, a bamboo magazine holder, a Roberts radio and piles of old cloth-bound novels and shiny new coffee table books, which all help perpetuate the illusion that you are staying in the well-appointed apartment of a glamorous and hospitable friend. Lest an unsightly black screen detract from all this soothing opulence, the television turns out to be hidden in the ottoman at the end of the canopied bed. And because this is a room in which every detail of comfort seems to have been thought out, a swivel action means it can be watched from either the bed or the sofa.