When the going gets tough - the tough read poetry... ‘Rhyme with Reason’ - at The Goring this April

London, April 2009: Throughout the month of April, every evening at 7.00pm, poems will be read aloud at The Goring, London’s only privately owned and run 5* hotel in London.

Jeremy Goring, the fourth Goring to run The Goring, said:

“I read somewhere that poetry is officially therapeutic – a doctor in Bristol found out that people felt better after reading or listening to poetry – so we thought it would be wonderful to take a moment each evening to stop and do something different. We’ve chosen all sorts of poems, so there will be something for everyone – and we are still open to suggestions.”

Every day a poem will be chosen that loosely relates to an event which happened on that date – as well as other poems chosen by the reader.

Examples of ‘Rhyme with Reason’ include:

• ‘The Elephant’ by Hilaire Belloc - to mark the arrival in April 1796 of the first elephant ever seen in the USA from India
• ‘The Night Mail’ by W H Auden – to mark the introduction of pillar boxes in the UK in April 1855
• ‘Hunter Trials’ by John Betjeman – to mark the first ever Badminton Horse Trials in April 1949
• ‘A Good Poem’ by Roger McGough – in honour of the first FA Cup Final held at Wembley Stadium in 1923

Ranging from Kipling, Longfellow, Burns, Edward Thomas, Browning, Betjeman, W H Auden - to Brian Patten, e e cummings, Spike Milligan, Banjo Patterson, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne – The Goring will be the setting for a wealth of words and verse in April.

Readers will include Jeremy Goring, David Morgan Hewitt, Managing Director of The Goring, staff members and guests.

The poems will be read in the Bar and Lounge, the heart of the hotel, which were recently transformed by designer Tim Gosling. Inspired by the Empire period and drawing from elements of the Roman Empire and the Grand Tour, Gosling has created a wonderful feeling of lived-in luxury in the two rooms.

Hand woven carpets, deep red silk curtains, swagging and gilded and distressed cornicing, all create a feeling of full bodied opulence. The theme of deep crimson and gold runs through the Lounge and into the Bar, with its hand sprayed red lacquer walls and the specially commissioned carpet in a daring tiger print.

Next to the Bar, The Terrace, which overlooks The Goring Garden, has also been given the Gosling touch, providing a light and airy contrast and inspired by the John Soane Museum, using its famous yellow palette on the walls.

A painting of Lady Eden by John Singer Sargeant holds sway on the far wall and a portrait of Horatio Nelson presides over the Lounge – both of whom would no doubt have appreciated April’s poetic comings and goings.

‘Rhyme with Reason at The Goring’
will run on weekdays from
Wednesday 1 to Thursday 30 April, 2009
in the Bar and Lounge at 7pm

 FOR RESERVATIONS:
The Goring, Beeston Place,
London SW1W 0JW

Telephone + 44 (0) 20 7396 9000 /
Email Reservations@TheGoring.com or visit

www.TheGoring.com

The Goring is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World


PRESS INFORMATION:
Lucinda Buxton, Mango PR

Telephone:  020 7421 2500 /
Email: Lucinda.buxton@mangopr.co.uk

* Pictures at the top from left to right – Banjo Patterson; Rudyard Kipling, Dorothea McKellar, Spike Milligan