A weekend to remember

You’ve already seen Big Ben and the Natural History Museum–so what next? Jo Rodgers describes her dream long weekend in London

- Jo Rodgers

ASK another Londoner to describe a few perfect days in town and their ideas will never line up with yours. London is one of the broadest urban churches on earth, and the people who live here, including me, are guilty of kippering in their own narrow habits. Even worse, more often than not, I am simply at home, rather than climbing the spiral staircase at a glasshouse in Kew or squinting at Big Ben. But this itinerary is what I wish I were doing. The writer Dorothy L. Sayers once said something to the effect that when she was stuck at her desk, she liked to lavish the fortune of the hero she created, Lord Peter Wimsey. ‘When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room, I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly,’ she said. ‘When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare, I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it.’ Reader, pull around your Daimler.

Friday

Emerging into the pinball grandeur of Piccadilly at about lunchtime, you’re spotted by a bellhop around the corner on Arlington Street, who reels you in and guides you under a shell of navy and gold awning to The Ritz (www.theritzlondon. com). The Ritz is a gilded hotel close enough to Buckingham Palace to make a telephone out of tins and string. There are families here for afternoon tea, choosing scones in the Palm Court, and young couples having bucket-list lunches in the frescoed dining room, as well as guests climbing the stairs to Louis XVI style bedrooms. The variety keeps the atmosphere moving.