An Inspector Calls… A review of A Room With A View, Brighton

Well, there’s always Brighton — even though those of a certain age will forever associate the town with the ‘dirty weekend’, that post-war euphemism for spending time with someone other than your intended in draughty guest houses that served undercooked bacon to over-sexed couples with double portions of guilt on the side.

Except, today, many of those guest houses have morphed into boutique b&bs with power showers, espresso machines and white towelling robes.

A Room With A View fits the new genre admirably. It’s on the seafront near Palace Pier and bang next door to the well-known Drakes Hotel.

When booking, you are encouraged to choose a particular room as shown on the website. I go for Room 3 at the side of the white end-of-terrace Regency building, for which I am paying £89.

It’s small, but immaculate. I like the plantation shutters, the cheery headboard, the taupe walls, the cosiness.

A woman checks me in and explains how to work the front door if going out to dinner. Then she leaves the premises. It’s all a touch impersonal, but that’s preferable to dealing with bossy landladies of yesteryear.

A friend who lives locally suggests we eat at The Salt Room, which occupies part of the Hilton Metropole Hotel about half a mile further west and close to the Grand Hotel, forever associated with the attempt on Margaret Thatcher’s life by the IRA in 1984.

The young waitress recommends the ‘share and tear’ pork special. We have no regrets. On my return to A Room With A View, the wind is howling, the rain battering the windows.

No view, either, of course. But there’s blue sky next morning as sea horses thunder towards the pebble beach. The English Channel looks raw, inhospitable but thrilling in its relentlessness.

Breakfast is served from 8am. The buffet is a joy, with fruit salad that looks as if it’s been made ten minutes ago rather than ten days ago. You help yourself to coffee from a machine similar to those in business class airport lounges.

I also order avocado on toast with crispy bacon, topped off with a couple of poached eggs and flaked chilli. Which is now just as much of a B&B classic as beans on toast was in the 1950s.