Raffles Hotel, Singapore 189768
In 1921, Somerset Maugham, a popular British playwright and novelist, made his first of many visits to the Raffles Hotel. Legend has it that he usually spent his mornings under the frangipani tree in the Palm Court, inspired by the conversations happening around him.
Somerset Maugham bequeathed the hotel a letter granting permission to use his quote as a recommendation: “All the tales of the East come true at Raffles.” The letter is kept in room 102, where the writer last stayed in 1960, which is now called the Somerset Maugham Suite. Another suite in the hotel proudly bears the name of Rudyard Kipling — the writer even left an autograph here saying “feed in Raffles,” which hangs on the wall in his former room. It is on Kipling’s advice that one should visit one of the six restaurants and three bars on the hotel grounds; he knew why he wrote “feed in Raffles.” A pleasant respite from the crowd is offered by the Writers’ Bar, tucked away in a cozy corner of the hotel. Here, guests can have a nightcap or choose from cocktails inspired by literary luminaries who have visited the hotel over the decades — from the author of the novella "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad, who visited the hotel in 1887, to the first Singaporean writer to live at Raffles Hotel Singapore, Madeleine Lee. Incidentally, Joseph Conrad described the hotel in his novel “The End of the Tether” as “airy, like a birdcage.”
Noël Coward, the great British playwright, novelist, and actor, first visited Raffles in 1931. He last stayed there nearly 40 years later, in 1968. One of the most famous French novelists of the 1900s, André Malraux, stayed at Raffles multiple times during his trips to the Far East — several of which took place during his appointments as Minister of Information and Minister of Culture. James A. Michener, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who became a regular guest after his first visit in 1949, wrote about the hotel: “To have been young and had a room at Raffles was life at its best.”
In 1931, Pablo Neruda, former Consul of Chile in Singapore and the most famous Chilean poet, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature in 1971, stayed here.
Award-winning journalist and travel book author Gavin Young was a frequent guest at Raffles during his visits to Singapore. His last visit was in November 1998.
Sources:
https://www.raffles.com/singapore/gallery/
https://www.rafflessingapore.com/room/personality-suites/
https://www.historichotels.org/hotels-resorts/raffles-hotel-singapore/history.php
