THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 29
1
MINIBARREPORT
TRANSFORMATIVETWENTIES
I
s there room for champagne and
chocolate when the planet is burn-
ing? One recent Tuesday, fifty hospi-
tality and marketing professionals gath-
ered in a suite at the Greenwich Hotel
to hear the findings of a report put to-gether by the London-based bou-
tique-hotel booking service Mr & Mrs
Smith and a consulting firm called the
Future Laboratory. The subject: the fu-
ture of romantic travel.
“No one needs another report that’s
about the next hotel that might be on
the moon or Mars,” James Lohan said.
He had been a night-club promoter
before he founded Mr & Mrs Smith,
in 2003, with his wife, Tamara, who
used to run a matchmaking service.
“Or robots,” Tamara added. She wore
a dress with a swirly black-and-white
print.
The name of Mr & Mrs Smith,
which began as a hotel guidebook, is a
reference to a time when unmarried
couples had to sign hotel registers with
an alias. “We’re celebrating the great
British dirty weekend,” James said. “A
celebration of going away with some-
one you love—in wedlock, out of wed-
lock! We’re not worried about who you
are, what you are.”
“In the first book, one of our re-
viewers went away as part of a throu-
ple,” Tamara said.
“Too many guides are a bit worthy
or a bit too worried,” James said. He
wore silver boots and a blue velvet blazer.
As guests sat in front of a big screen,games when they could afford it. (A
bleacher seat cost sixty cents.) When
Bernie was in high school, he ran for
student-body president on a platform
that promised to raise scholarship funds
for orphans of the Korean War. “He
finished third, out of three,” Larry said.
But his policy was adopted by the school.
Larry describes his brother as a bit
of a workaholic. The last time Bernie
visited England was a couple of years
ago, to promote a book. He wasn’t in-
terested in touring Oxford’s historic
sites. When Larry took him to Blen-
heim Palace, Bernie remarked on the
plight of the workers who had built it.
“The buildings, they didn’t impress
him,” Larry said. “He was impressed
by the number of people who must
have slogged their guts out digging the
pool.” Bernie’s only wish was to see the
track on Iffley Road where, in 1954,
Roger Bannister ran the first four-min-
ute mile. “Bernard was amazed by that,”
Larry said, adding that his brother was
a star on the James Madison High
School track-and-field team. “Four-
thirty-seven,” Larry said, citing Ber-
nie’s mile time.
As a child, Bernie was known for
blurting out, at school, details about
the family “that we would prefer not
to be public,” Larry said. “He had the
idea that you really had to tell the truth.
I had to have a long talk with him—
it’s right not to lie, but you do not have
to tell the truth all the time.” This hon-
esty, Larry suggested, has both fortified
his brother’s support and stoked his
opposition: “He lost elections. He didn’t
give up. He took abuse.” Of Trump,
Larry added, “Bernard will bash him.”
The brothers are still close. They
used to speak on the phone every two
weeks, but the rigors of the campaign
have reduced their communication
mainly to e-mails. In a recent message
to Bernie, Larry mentioned an upcom-
ing campaign event in France. “I told
him that, because of him, I had to go
to Paris,” Larry said. “‘See how much
I do!’ ”
The next evening, in London, Lar-
ry’s Bernie event was sold out. A hun-
dred people gathered in the basement
of a trade-union headquarters. Some
wore T-shirts with the slogan “Our
Revolution Abroad.” The results from
the Iowa caucuses were supposed to
“Now that you are a woman, I want you to have this
sweater that was given to me by my mom, who was always cold.
It was given to her by her mom, who was always cold.
She got it from her mom, who never knew warmth in her life.”• •
have been reported that morning, but
technical problems had delayed the
announcement. Larry chalked it up to
“cock-up, rather than conspiracy.” In a
gentle voice, he reminded the audience
members of their voting power. “We
are like a small state,” he said of the
Democrats Abroad primary, which, in
2016, elected one delegate fewer than
Wyoming. Of the D.N.C. Convention,
he said, “I think things will happen
on the floor—good things and bad
things—but it is going to be nip and
tuck.” He plans to attend again this
year. “Bernard is not a big crier,” he
said. “But I am.”
—Eren Orbey