Visitors to the British Museum might recognise the lower facade in the above picture as, The Thackeray Hotel, now no longer a hotel, is still more or less intact and faces the main pillared entrance to the Museum. The other hotel above, The Kingsley Hotel, which was supposedly in the road behind the Thackeray, I have been unable to locate on Google Streetview: doesn't mean it's not there just that I can't find it.
The two hotels, presumably managed by the same company issued a little booklet in the 1920s about things "Old and New" to see in London and included in the booklet were numerous illustrations of the interior of the hotels. One imagines any number of literary detectives sweeping across the Afghan rugs and leaning on the mahogany mantles. Delicious!
