Life beyond East London| London’s best new luxury hotels

At some point in the mid-2000s I made the conscious decision to shift what I knew as “central London” seven stops east along the Central Line from Oxford Circus to Liverpool Street. Having been brought up in the garden postcodes of Muswell Hill and Hampstead Heath, a milk-fed North London girl, I’d rebelled and spent my twenties and early thirties in Brixton. Attracted by the grit and the grime, I think I was secretly waiting for it to deliver on a long-standing promise to hurry the hell up and gentrify.

When I left for a new life in New York a year later, that’s how I left London – my hometown having shrunk to exclude everything beyond postcodes E1–9

Meanwhile, that’s what was happening in Shoreditch and Hackney, and while I continued downing pints in dodgy Brixton boozers populated by prostitutes and small-time drug lords (c’mon, so cool!) I watched as, one by one, my friends migrated East to become part of the hipster community turning Old Street from concrete jungle to creative hub.

It wasn’t long before all my socialising was being done within a one-mile radius of Bishopsgate too. My husband had a job at Conran’s dearly departed Great Eastern Hotel, known for raucous parties that went on for days, and when Shoreditch House opened up just off the Bethnal Green Road in 2006, the deal was sealed. East London had become a brand in its own right – and the epicentre of cool.

I didn’t make the move there myself until 2010, by which time I’d also scored a job at The Sunday Times, whose offices were on the river at Wapping – just a hop, skip and a jump down Brick Lane. For home, work, and social life, there was no need to venture West of Farringdon, North of Highbury, or South of London Bridge. And when I left for a new life in New York a year later, that’s how I left London – my hometown having shrunk to exclude everything beyond postcodes E1–9.

The first few times I went back to visit, I made a beeline East – booking one of the astonishingly cheap rooms at The Hoxton Hotel in an attempt to slot seamlessly back into my old life. I got high on the familiarity of my old haunts, and, wanting to keep to keep abreast of the subtle upgrades that kept threatening to outrun me, booked dinner at Hoi Polloi and shopped for crystals at Celestine Eleven.

But then something interesting started to happen. The longer I spent away from London, the more I began to appreciate those parts I’d disregarded back when I moved my focus East. Gazing out of the taxi window as we shot down the Euston Road from Paddington, I’d find myself flooded with nostalgia for childhood visits to the London Zoo, or Madame Tussauds.

Meanwhile, I was overwhelmed with just how beautiful London was – Central London, the tourists’ London, at least

Another time, journeying south via Kensington to stay with friends in Oval, I realised I’d forgotten the route (having learned to drive in the capital, I’d always prided myself on my black taxi-like knowledge of her streets). Meanwhile, I was overwhelmed with just how beautiful London was – Central London, the tourists’ London, at least.

As a born-and-bred Londoner, I’ve come to appreciate that being able to see London through a foreigner’s eyes is a unique privilege – and one I decided to capitalise on in my last visit, a two-week, pre-Christmas, work-play catch-up-a-thon.

Since I left the city, a spate of extremely well-located hotels have opened up shop – well-located once we shift the focus back to W1, that is. The Conrad, a new five-star offering from Hilton, sits right opposite St. James’s tube station, and is only 15 minutes’ taxi ride from the Heathrow Express. I was safely ensconced in my reassuringly beige suite a little over an hour after landing on British soil – surely some kind of record.

This being a Hilton, and also a direct reappropriation of the InterContinental that stood in this spot previously, there is nothing design-wise to mark The Conrad out. Beyond the sweeping, spotlit entrance, there’s no real “wow” factor to speak of. But everything here runs as smooth as silk, and being in the heart of what they’re calling “Westminster Village” (and slap bang on the Circle line) means you’re minutes from pretty much everywhere – including my beloved East end.

After a jetlag-busting mini workout in the perfectly appointed (if tiny) fitness centre the next morning, I made lunch with a friend in Spitalfields in 25 minutes flat. And if the rooms still whisper “business-traveller” in your ear as you settle into the beige for the night, then they’re just glitzy enough to appeal to the Bond Street shoppers and Buck Pal oglers this place wants to attract.

A little further along the Thames, the Corinthia, with its suited-and-booted doormen and elegant, cream-tea-tastic drawing room lobby, is making an all-out bid to become “the new Claridge’s”. This is old school London luxury – when I visited, they had a special Christmas shop featuring a ginormous tree made of gingerbread biscuits – interpreted with all mod cons, including the subterranean, four-storey spa that’s winning them awards left, right and centre.

Here, you’re only moments from Charing Cross, Leicester Square and Covent Garden, where I worked in a boutique in the Piazza in between school and Uni, and on various magazines after I graduated. And although the gym here beats even Manhattan’s state-of-the-art treadmill factories hands down, I opted for a misty morning run along the Embankment for the sheer nostalgia factor, the memories – of skateboarding with my brother along the South Bank, debauched boat parties, and romantic dinners at the Oxo Tower – like hits of pure adrenalin.

But the real jewels in the crown at the Corinthia are the seven penthouse suites. Lavishly decked out (and I’m talking Middle Eastern lavish) over two floors, each features its own roof terrace. One even has a hot tub – ambitious for London – and all offer up-close-and-personal views of Big Ben, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. Hit, hit, hit, came the reminders that this city is written into my DNA.

The deco décor has a Gatsbyish feel and the porters, with their OTT plummy accents, a theatrical flair. Here, my nostalgia trip took a turn towards my days at the London College of Fashion

Next up, a short taxi ride through Mayfair to the Beaumont – the first outpost from Corbin & King, the people behind the Wolseley – which is as decadent and debonair as you’d expect. Arriving here, in the tight little jigsaw of streets just south of Bond Street (Selfridges is within spitting distance), feels like pitching up at some gazillionaire’s mansion in the 1920s.

The deco décor has a Gatsbyish feel and the porters, with their OTT plummy accents, a theatrical flair. Here, my nostalgia trip took a turn towards my days at the London College of Fashion, just around the corner on Davies Street; to staying warm on cold mornings with tea and cigarettes outside the little cafés on St Christopher’s Place, and to gin and tonics upstairs at the Henry Holland pub.

I had to try the restaurant here, of course, and had lunch with my friend Ravinder, a brilliant (and gorgeous) chef and food writer. Ensconced in the buzzy, clubby Colony Grill, bathed in what Ravinder called their expert “vanity lighting”, I decided if I were an American tourist, I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven. They also happened to do an exceptionally good shrimp cocktail.

Back in my room, a masculine affair in black, white, and grey, with British and American plug sockets (nice touch), an offering of house-made chocolate on the night stand, and a spectacular marbled bathroom, I kept expecting Jeeves to pop his head around the door and ask if I’d like my Times ironing.

That night, I’d arranged to have dinner with some friends in Dalston (at someone’s house, no less, a rarity indeed since nobody has the space to entertain at home in NYC), and taking a bus up Kingsland Road I realised what I like best about being a London girl. There’s a part of me that’s Hampstead Heath, and a part of me that’s Brixton. And while the part I left behind was all East London edge, the real centre of London, what they call “up West”, has been the anchor holding it all together, all along. C

Ruby Warrington is founder and editor of The Numinous – “material girl, mystical world”