60 Travel
The building was once
home to the Coventry
Evening Telegraphpork belly, stone bass fillet, steaks) from
£14.50. The cocktail list offers classics
alongside their own prosecco and
vanilla vodka-based Lady Godiva,
named after Coventry’s naked,
horse-riding noblewoman. Locally
brewed beers such as Hot off the Press
IPA are also available.
Former offices serve as spacious
bedrooms, with framed prints of suited
journalists at work on the walls and
playful “Do Not Disturb” signs replaced
with “On a Deadline”. There are more
mid-century stylings too, from fern-leaf
patterned Formica coffee tables to
Sputnik bathroom tiles.
With a tapas-style menu and cocktailpunching-in clock on the old reception
desk in the lobby. Interior designer
Oliver Redfern’s nods to 1950s and
1960s style include starburst clocks,
flying ducks and club sofas.
The ground-floor restaurant and
1950s-style cocktail bar Forme &
Chase is the hotel’s lead story, imagined
as the kind of place journalists and
ad men might have taken long, boozy
lunches (and might do again). Walls
beneath the conservatory’s glass
roof are papered with historic front
pages, from the shooting of John
Lennon to Margaret Thatcher
taking power, while the restaurant
serves generous mains (cider-braisedWhat’s the story?
Coventry’s new hotel doffs a respectful
cap to local newspaper the Coventry
Evening Telegraph, which operated from
this location for more than half a
century. The printing presses have gone,
but blasts from the paper’s past remain
inside this smart 88-room hotel, along
with Mad Men-inspired mid-century
glamour, a rooftop terrace, and
celebratory food and cocktails in the
restaurant Forme & Chase.
What do we like?
Few opportunities have been missed to
keep the Coventry Evening Telegraph’s
history alive, including original glass
doors, marble columns and the
The Times
hotel guide
Telegraph
Hotel
Coventry
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NICK SMITHForme & Chase
restaurant and barlist, Generators, the 2021 UK City
of Culture’s first open-air rooftop bar,
is a place to sit back with a drink and
read a newspaper.What’s near by?
Student halls, a budget gym chain and
the new, austere Belgrade Theatre mean
the immediate surroundings aren’t very
vibrant or attractive. But the hotel is
bang in the city centre, with shops,
markets, restaurants and bars seconds
away. Coventry’s three cathedrals,
including Basil Spence’s 1960s
construction, are a seven-minute walk,
just beyond the Lady Godiva statue.
Graeme GreenGraeme Green was a
guest of the Telegraph
Hotel. B&B doubles from
£75 (telegraph-hotel.com)