The Bristol Hotel on Rab Island

Guests at the sumptuous waterside four-star Hotel Arbiana on the Croatian island of Rab may wonder how the Cocktail Bar Bristol got its name. The fact is that when the hotel was built in 1932, it was called the Bristol. Four years later, Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales arrived on the island and bathed naked on a discreet beach, establishing the island's reputation for naturism. Their voyage is told in "High Noon for the King's Moll", a chapter in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. The chapter can be read online. The hotel's name changed during the Communist years, though not all Bristols were erradicated in Yugoslavia. In Skopje, Macedonia, the Bristol, built in the 1924, is still in business. The only hotel in the street to survive the 1963 earthquake, it features in the "A Motoring Lesson from Macedonia". The story can be heard on YouTube.

The old Moscow Bristol

Where was the Bristol Hotel in Moscow? According to Masha Salazkina, author of Sergei Einstein's Mexico, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera stayed in the Moscow Bristol in 1927. It was, says Salazkina, the haunt of "well known figures in the loosely connected global network of modernist critics, collectors and promotors". According to Patrick Marnham's biography of Rivera, the artists left the hotel suddenly in April 1928 after he had clashed with the artistic authorities.

This illustration of the Moscow Bristol's "Hotel Bus" comes from Maurice A. Kelly's Russian Motor Vehicles: The Czarist Period 1784 to 1917, in which full technical details are given. Made by a company called Dux in 1902, it was run on electricity and had a top speed of 12mph, and a range of 60 miles.

New Bristol in St Petersburg

The new Bristol (left) and the earlier version, hitting the headlines in 1905

A new Bristol Hotel opened in St Petersburg last week. The three-star hotel is in Ulitsa Rasstanaya on the south side of the city, with parking facilities and a shuttle service to Pulkova airport. It has 120 rooms, with all mod cons and a restaurant specialising in game. The first Bristol in St Petersburg was by the Moika River, 4km north of the present hotel. It caught a revolutionary's bomb in 1906, though nobody was killed, but it did not survive the Revolution (See Hotel Bristol News)

Now you can get married at the Newquay Bristol

The Bristol Hotel in Newquay, Cornwall, has acquired a licence for civil marriages. The 74-bed hotel (the redbrick building in the picture, above Tolcarne Beach) has been in the hands of the Young family since 1927. It was founded by Howard Young and his wife Minnie, after he returned from his travels on the Continent, where he had seen a number of smart hotels called Bristol, and thought the name would add caché. In the Second World War the girls of Benenden School in Kent were evacuated here, and they have held reunions here since. The private school is one of the most expensive in the country (£9,980 a term), and its former pupils include Princess Anne, the actress Rachel Weisz and Lady Victoria Hervey, descendent of the eccentric Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, after whom it is said the first Bristol hotels were named.
Read Paris Hilton & Victoria Hervey - a chapter from 'High Times at the Hotel Bristol'.

New Hotel Bristol in Pyatigorsk, Russia

The Hotel Bristol rises again in Pyatigorsk in the Caucasus. The town, with a population of around 150,000, is one of the oldest spa resorts in Russia. Its waters were nationalised by Alexander I at the beginning of the 19th century, and at the start of the 20th century the town had another Hotel Bristol but it did not survive the Soviet revolution. The Spa Hotel Bristol is an historic building, and it continues the tradition of water treatment.

Fa-Raon, Parisian concierge cat

Fa-Raon, a snow-white Burmese cat, plays host at Hotel le Bristol in Paris and has been doing quite a bit of promo work. Often seen around the hotel, he writes his own regular diary. about the hotel, and was recently interviewed by the hedonost's guide, Hg2. He is pictured here in one of the hotel's cars, which can be hired by guests.

How Albania made a king at the Paris Bristol

Many things have occurred in Bristol hotels -- births, deaths, marriages. But a coronation must surely top them all. Leka Zogu (pictured here) was proclaimed King Leka I of Albania by his countrymen in exile in a function room at Le Bristol in Paris on April 15, 1961. This followed the death of his father, the self-proclaimed Zog I, who had been living in exile since the Italian invasion of 1939.

News of the event comes with the announcement of Leka's death yesterday (November 30) in a hospital in Tirana at the age of 72. He had been born in Albania's capital just a few days before the family went into exile, and spent much of his life in South Africa. In 1997 a referendum was held on the monarchy, which was defeated by two-thirds of the vote. After vigorously protesting the legitimacy of the result, he left the country, returning to live there in 2002, two years before his Australian wife, Susan Cullen-Ward, died. He is survived by their son, also called Leka, who works in the foreign ministry.