We have just got back from a few days spent in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the French side. It was a walking holiday, but these days stiffening joints and balance not being quite as good as it used to be, restricts us to about 500 metres climbing and descending, however we compensate by staying in better class hotels. This time we stayed in a hotel at St-Savin that has been in the same family for five generations and so it was a good time to read Elizabeth Bowen's story of The Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, published in 1951. An establishment much grander than our hotel in St Savin, but one can appreciate a book about a hotel when one is a paying guest in a similar establishment.

Elizabeth Bowen was a successful and world famous novelist, her first novel published in 1927 was called The Hotel. Bowen was born in Dublin and so the imposing Shelbourne hotel situated opposite Stephen's Green: said to be the largest square in Europe, would have been part of her childhood. Her family was of the Irish gentry and could trace their ancestors back to the 1500's and this would put her in a good position to write a history of the hotel, but I wonder why she would wish to do this? Did somebody ask her to write it, or was it a subject that she found interesting or stimulating. I struggle to think it was the latter because the book is written in such a flat passionless style. This is the first book I have read by Bowen and so I do not have any knowledge of her usual writing style, but this certainly smacks of somebody writing from the upper echelons of society and being careful not to upset anybody who might matter. However it is a history and not a novel and it comes from a period (1951) when cool precise writing of this kind might be much admired.

Bowen tells the story from when three townhouses first became known as the Shelbourne when they were adapted by Martin Burke in 1824. There was a major redesign in 1867, but at the time it consisted of rooms or apartments which wealthy citizens might hire for long or short periods of time. Tourism as we recognise it today hardly existed. Bowen dutifully sketches in some details of the early owners and managers and gives a picture of the life and society that passed outside its front doors. The real drama in this history occurs at the start of the first world war, when almost the whole staff were arrested because many of them were of German origin. This was followed by the Easter uprising in 1916 when the Irish irregulars occupied Stephen's Green and the Shelbourne was used by British troops to strafe the occupants of the Green. History was again enacted inside the hotel in 1922 when the Constitution of the Irish Free State was drafted in room 112. Ireland being neutral in the second world war meant that the Shelbourne could keep its lights blazing throughout war time. After the war the Shelbourne hotel has settled down to life as a commercial hotel attracting the more wealthy tourists. Bowen's story ends in 1951, but today the Shelbourne is a luxury five star hotel that features its role in the history of Ireland.

As a history of one of the most imposing buildings in Dublin and as a portrait of changing times within the vicinity of the hotel then this book succeeds admirably. For the casual reader it also works well enough because it gives a flavour of well to do city life from mid 19th century up until 1951. However the men and women important to the hotel hardly ever detach themselves from the furnishings and this reader was left with a well written history that hardly rose above the mildly interesting and so 3 stars. ( )