Mini Review: The Bloomsbury, London

Why go?

Because London is never more thrilling than when seen at the height of a seven-year-old. Egyptian mummies before lunch, a key you can eat at tea, a West End curtain rising after dark and, back upstairs, a small tent pitched beneath the wallpaper. The Bloomsbury understands that a city break should feel faintly implausible.

Family style

For families who want London without surrendering to a hotel full of primary colours and plastic. This is a grown-up house with a soft spot for children. Parents get Lutyens, velvet and martinis; smaller guests get bears, dens and the feeling that London has opened a secret door just for them.

Set the scene

Outside, Great Russell Street clatters along in black cabs, buses and people making determinedly for the British Museum. Then up the Portland-stone steps you go, through Sir Edwin Lutyens’ handsome façade, and the city turns theatrical.

Martin Brudnizki has filled the public rooms with colour and bravado. The Coral Room is a tall, glossy confection of coral lacquer, scalloped sofas, Murano chandeliers and Luke Edward Hall drawings. Everyone sits up straighter here. Dalloway Terrace vanishes beneath leaves and flowers.

Londoners drop in for drinks, families return from Matilda and museum-goers discuss Assyrian lions over something cold. Grand, yes, but never hushed. Children are not made to feel they have wandered into the wrong drawing room.

The Kit

Arrival has been considered from a child’s eye line. Cakes and fresh fruit are waiting, teddy bears sit ready to be claimed and towels have been twisted into elephants. In the bathroom, children have their own toiletries beside the proper bath, so even washing London from grubby knees feels ceremonial.

Two double beds mean everyone can spread out, but they are also deliciously roomy when somebody wakes at midnight, remembers they are in a strange place and appears for a cuddle. The television is large, ready for a Sunday-night family film beneath the duvet.

Then comes the tent, pitched beneath all that grown-up wallpaper with cushions and bears inside. Colouring books and board games keep the expedition going; milk and cookies bring it softly to an end. It is not simply kit laid out for children. It is the room quietly telling them: this bit of London belongs to you, too.

The Activities

No kids’ club. Entirely unnecessary. London has taken the job.

The British Museum is practically across the road, Covent Garden and Soho are an easy scamper away, and the West End is close enough for a matinee without a campaign involving buggies and emergency raisins. One more gallery. One more sweet shop. Home for a rest, then out again as the lights come on.

And then the Secret Garden Afternoon Tea. Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book, it unfolds less like a meal and more like a clue. An illustrated activity book draws children into Mary Lennox’s hidden world; a shortbread key follows; then a Chocolate Flower Pot, all edible earth and delicious deception, and Mary’s Victoria Sandwich. Small fingers hover. Eyes widen. Someone squeals. Nobody begins with the sandwiches.

Warm scones and finger sandwiches keep one foot in tradition, but the charm lies in the make-believe. On flower-filled Dalloway Terrace, one might believe the ivy could shift and reveal a door. On summer weekdays, tea moves into The Coral Room, where coral walls and chandeliers supply a more flamboyant spell. It is beautiful for adults, mischievous for children and never feels as though anyone is being educationally entertained.

Rooms

Book the adjoining family rooms. Children can colonise their own bedroom while parents reclaim the evening next door; everyone is together, but not on top of one another.

The decoration is where they sing. Wallpaper blooms across the walls; deep colours are lifted by coral and pink; velvet, patterned upholstery and old-fashioned lamps make everything feel collected rather than installed. Not a whisper of apologetic hotel beige. Bathrooms are marble and heated underfoot. Returning without children? Luxury Studio Suites have parquet floors, statement Colefax wallpaper and generous marble bathrooms.

Food and drink

After bedtime, a parent should slip down to The Coral Room, sink into a scalloped sofa and order something very cold. Forty-five minutes beneath those chandeliers can be remarkably restorative. Dalloway Terrace is softer as evening gathers in the leaves; The Coral Room is for remembering you own proper shoes.

The story

Lutyens designed the building in 1928 as a club for the YWCA, apparently looking to Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House for inspiration. One can see it in the handsome proportions and faint sense of a building made to be peered into.

Bloomsbury’s ghosts are lightly worn. Virginia Woolf lends Mrs Dalloway’s name to the terrace, the Bloomsbury Set flickers through portraits, and the wood-panelled library recalls Seamus Heaney. Happily, nobody has turned literary London into a theme park.

Spa

There is no spa. You will survive. This hotel is for going out into London, not vanishing into a robe for half the day. There is a gym for the virtuous; for everyone else, twelve thousand steps and carrying a sleeping child from a taxi should cover it.

Eco-friendly

Behind the coral lacquer, the useful work is less theatrical. All eight Doyle Collection hotels hold ECOsmart Platinum certification; its British properties use renewable electricity, while the group is reducing single-use plastics and sourcing many ingredients within 50 miles. Quiet, measurable progress.

Location

The secret weapon. The British Museum is moments away; Covent Garden, Soho and the West End sit within an easy walk. When a child wilts, a favourite toy is forgotten or everybody needs half an hour in silence, the room is close enough to retreat to.

Then out again. Down the stone steps, into the roar and glitter of London, with a pocket full of crumbs from an edible key.