Sombre mood in Paris Bristol after Aurora killings

The star-spangled Paris premier of The Dark Knight Rises was cancelled on Friday as news of the massacre by the murderous Batman figure in Aurora reached the city. Staying at the elite five-star Le Bristol, the film's stars, Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway and Marion Cotillard immediately abandoned publicity interviews. According to the rolling news on The Daily Telegraph website, there was "total confusion" at the Bristol where a French journalist reported, "The mood caused complete panic. All the publicists and other movie staff were taking calls and shouting, while actors and actresses returned to their hotel suites."
   Film fans continued to hang around Le Bristol waiting for autographs from the stars, but on Saturday they decamped, according to the NY Daily News, "sneaking out through the parking garage in a fleet of black cars with tinted windows without saying a word to clueless fans cooling their heels on the sidewalk."
   The picture here shows the dismantling of the premier cinema venue. Doubts were raised about the film's planned national distribution, due on July 25.

Hotel Bristols from the past

Two images surfaced recently on the net. The Hotel Bristol in Havana, Cuba, produced a number of cards and labels. But this one is different: a fresh looking image of a holiday resort of the 1920s. The distinctive, angular script typeface of the hotel name was often used on its publicity material. The hotel was advertised as a fireproof building with 100 rooms.

The Hotel Bristol in Carrasco, a suburb of Montevideo, Uruguay, no longer exists. But it looks as if it might have been a happy family holiday resort, with a beach, Playa Bristol, named after the hotel. Perhaps that was before Carrasco airport was built in 1947 to serve the capital.

Graham Greene says, "There's always a Bristol Hotel"

Graham Greene's 1939 novel  The Confidential Agent opens with the arrival of the hero 'D' at Dover. He has been abroad for so long that his passport photograph bears little resemblance to him, and as result a detective takes him aside to question him.

..."Perhaps, if you would let me know where you are staying in London," he says, "...an addresss?"
..."Bristol," D replies. "There's always a Bristol."
..."Not in England," the detective replies, and he goes on to suggest the Strand Palace as a suitable hotel for somebody who clearly could not afford the Ritz.

It is true that there was no Hotel Bristol in London at the time. The Bristol Hotel in Burlington Gardens, described in the 1900 Baedeker as "a high class house similar to the Albermarle", had not survived. But there was at least one Bristol hotel in England.

The Hotel Bristol in Newquay, which is still flourishing, was started by Howard and Minnie Young in 1927, Mr Young having just returned from the Continent where he had seen a number of smart hotels called Bristol.

This postcards (right) of the Hotel Bristol in Brighton has no date on it, but may well be from around in that time. On the sea front, it is now the Bristol Bar. There was also a Hotel Bristol in Folkestone about the time Graham Greene was writing.

In 2007 Jurys hotel in Bristol changed its name to simply The Hotel Bristol – surprisingly, it was the first hotel in the city to have the name.

Bristol's Brigstow for sale

The Brigstow in Bristol is up for sale. The four-star hotel (116 rooms) by the Welsh Back waterfront, has a good reputation under its manager, Tim Howes, who was kind enough to bulk order copies of High Times at the Hotel Bristol when it was first published. His reason for the interest? Brigstow is an old name for Bristol, a Saxon word meaning the place on the bridge. The hotel is on the market through Savills, who are asking for offers exceeding £9m (£77,500 per room). They are optimistic about finding a buyer. "Bristol's hotel market is currently outperforming the UK regional average," says James Bradley of the agent's hotel team. "We have already received significant interest."
We certainly look forward to the Brigstow's continued prosperity.

Russians stick to the Warsaw Bristol

On the tenth day of every month a demonstration takes place outside the presidential palace in Warsaw, to commemorate the plane crash in Russia in 2010 in which President Lech Kaczynski and other top politicians died. A few yards away is the Warsaw Bristol, where the Russian football team have booked a whole floor for Euro 2012.  Poland's sports minister Joanna Mucha thinks the demonstrators might spread to to the hotel and has asked the Russians to find somewhere else to stay. But the Russians are refusing to budge. They play their first game, against the Czech Republic, on June 8, and play Poland on June 12.
The Warsaw Bristol was founded by the piano-playing president Ignacy Paderewski in 1897, and the hotel features in the story "Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour" in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Venezuela discovery

Just when I thought I had every Hotel Bristol in the world, I stumbled upon the Hotel Bristol in Barinas, in Venezuela. I should have known – it has been there since two Italian immigrants put up the money in 1979, opening the doors in 1981. It is a three star hotel with 69 rooms and conference facilities. Barinas is in the west of the country, capital of the vast tropical plain called Los Llanos, and has a population of around 250,000. I came across it on Twitter. It was following one person, and had one follower. Now it has two. I have added it to the list of All Bristol Hotels

New EU Thon is not a Bristol

A new Thon hotel is opening in the European Quarter of Brussels later this month, but it won't be another Bristol. Olav Thon, the colourful Norwegian property billionaire, already has three hotels called Bristol, one of them in Brussels – the Hotel Bristol Stephanie, which he bought in 1995. His first hotel acquisition was the historic Hotel Bristol in Oslo (pictured) in 1974, and in 1998 he bought the Hotel Bristol in Bergen. The new hotel in Brussels, the Thon EU, has 405 rooms, which will use mobile phone keys.

The wealthy Mr Thon is reported to have once said that one day he would like to take over the Hilton Hotel chain, which would simply be rebranded as Hilthon hotels.

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