Lord Bristol's daughter and the Devonshires

The Duchess, the 2008 film of Amanda Foreman's book Georgiana about the Duchess of Devonshire, was aired on BBC television on August 24. It starred Keira Knightley (above right) as the Duchess and Hayley Atwell (left) as Elizabeth Foster, who lived in ménage a trois with the duke (Ralph Fiennes) and duchess. Elizabeth Foster was the daughter of the 4th Earl of Bristol, who gave his names to scores of hotels around the world.  A descendent of hers (and his) is Anna Wintour, long-serving editor of Vogue.

Oslo Bristol helps put a paper to bed

The offices of Norway's biggest selling tabloid, VG (Verdens Gang, owned by Shibsted), were badly damaged in the car bomb blast in Oslo on June 22, which killed eight people. The glass-fronted and glass-roofed building in Regjeringskvartalet (the government quarter) lies opposite the government buildings where the blast occurred.
Kristine Lowe, who works on the paper, reported: "The staff was evacuated not once but twice during the afternoon and evening – first from VG, then from its temporary workspace in Shibsted's headquerters."
In the end the company hired six suites in Oslo's Hotel Bristol, where they bought the computer equipment necessary to lay out their stories and get them to the printers. This is the paper (left) they produced for the following morning.
"It was incredibly professional," says Lowe. "I am impressed by the paper they put together under trying circumstances."

* 'Jazz on a Cold Winter's Night', set in the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, is a short story in High Times at the Hotel Bristol

Woody Allen chooses another Bristol Hotel

Under the title "Woody Allen Soothes Rome with the Magic of Music" Socialite Life has published pictures of the American filmmaker in the Bernini Bristol Hotel in Italy's capital. He is in Rome to make Bop Decameron, with Ellen Page and Jesse Eissenberg, due for release next year. Allen clearly has a penchant for Bristol hotels... As reported in May, his latest movie, Midnight in Paris,was largely shot in Hôtel le Bristol in the French capital. 

The Bristol in Rome opened its doors in 1874, and is thought to be the oldest Hotel Bristol still functioning. 

Warsaw Bristol memories

Teresa Ferguson, a retired journalist from Warsaw has just returned to the Hotel Bristol after 22 years, and she describes her visit, and her memories of the hotel, where her mother was a receptionist in 1955, in her blog: Bristol Hotel in Warsaw – Walking the Memory Lane. As a child she spent days in the hotel behind the receptionist's desk, and attended Christmas parties. When she attended Warsaw University she used the Bristol Cafe, which was a popular student hangout. On her recent return to a quite different Warsaw, she writes: "All this mottled crowd, all this freedom, replaced the drab, silent and sad world that I had lived in, it seemed, only yesterday, and I thought about how different my life and my chances would have been were I a student now."
A tale about Lady Thatcher opening the revamped Warsaw Hotel Bristol in 1993 is told in 'Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour', a chapter in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Tales from Ukraine

Isaak Babel (1894–40) is remembered this year at the Odessa Literary Festival in the Odessa Museum on July 7, when a statue of him will be unveiled. Participants in the festival are being accommodated in the Hotel Bristol. Babel, the author of Odessa Tales, claimed that Odessa had 'more charm than any other city in the Russian Empire'. According to Lonely Planet: "That's probably still true in modern Ukraine. The course of this charm is the Odesans themselves: a breed apart, they're stylish, cultured, funny, savvy, and not easily impressed.' Odessa Tales describes the lives of Jewish gangsters in the city before and during the Revolution, which brings to mind George Soros, who once said that Ukraine gave corruption a bad name. 

New Hotel Bristol in Sarajevo

The 4-star Hotel Bristol in Sarajevo has recently opened, and has had good reviews, not least from satisfied customers from TripAdviser. Standing beside the River Miljacka in the heart of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina and 3km from the old town of Bascarsija, the hotel is owned by the Dubai-based Shaza hotel group. It has a Wellness and Fittness centres, pool, parking, two restaurants, a cafe and a 'traditional Bosnian lounge'. There are 16 suites as well as single and double rooms. It also has conference facilities and is popular with businessmen. Only a few years ago the Bristol was a derelict building, a victim of the Balkans war fit only for graffiti artists. It's good to see it back on its feet.

Wrinkles on the LA Bristol

The headline in the LA paper is: JR Throws 'Westside' Hand Sign on East Wall of Bristol Hotel for 'The Wrinkles of the City'. The W sign shows you come from the city's West Side, and was apparently started by the late Baby T of the Grape Street Crips. Since then it has moved from street gangs to the fashionable. This piece of street art on the side of the former Bristol Hotel, which has recently been refurbished, is by the French artist known as JR. It's part of his Wrinkles in the City project, which installs paintings of senior citizens on the sides of buildings in the streets where they live. They are being put up in collaboration with the Free Wall Project, and are being mapped by Google. 

Read the whole story in the Los Angeles Times.