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AMERICANS IN




                LONDON








                    Famous Americans Have Left Their Mark



                                                   | CARL H. LARSEN |


                      ust for a minute, I felt the                                few minutes later while looking out
                      excitement of American                                      a window from the spacious suite, I
                      writer John Steinbeck as                                    immediately sensed the emotion of
                      he settled in at 116 Picca-                                 what Steinbeck wrote when he took up
                      dilly in 1943 to become a                                   residence here. He told his wife, Gwyn,
                      war correspondent for The                                   that from his quarters, “all of London I
           JNew York Herald Tribune.                                              have ever read about is there.”

            Today the address belongs to the five-                                And so it still is. The prospect looks
            star Athenaeum Hotel, a modern and                                    out on St. James’s Park just across the
            convenient lodging a few minutes from                                 street and, to the left in the distance,
            Piccadilly Circus where my wife and I                                 is St. Paul’s Cathedral, the government
            stayed on a recent trip.                                              complex of Whitehall, while “a little
                                                                                  farther to the right is Big Ben, so close
            One afternoon, I timidly asked the                                    I could set my watch by it,” Steinbeck
            hotel concierge: “May I peek into the                                 wrote. And even closer were St. James’s
            penthouse, if it is not occupied?”                                    Palace and Buckingham Palace through
                                                                                  the trees.
           “Certainly,” came the reply. And a



            86    Wine Dine & Travel  Summer 2014
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