Word: ritzes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Vosges. Sometime after 9 p.m., the couple headed off to dinner. Realizing en route that their plans for a quiet meal at Benoit would be spoiled by the photographers piling up outside the restaurant, Dodi suddenly opted to return to the marbled pillars and plush carpeting of the Ritz, where hotel security could be counted on to fend off the photographers...
...worked at the hotel for 11 years. Though he had taken two special driving courses at Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart, he apparently did not have the professional chauffeur's license that French law requires. Acquaintances last week told reporters he had once been a heavy drinker, though a Ritz employee claimed that over the past year Paul's drinking had slowed down. The Fayed family insists that no one on the hotel staff saw any sign that Paul was drunk. But French and British papers last week carried anonymous quotes from people described as Ritz employees who said...
...drove away, Paul taunted the paparazzi with "You won't catch us." A few paparazzi followed the decoy cars, but others soon spotted the car carrying Diana and Dodi and took pursuit. In an interview with Liberation, the photographer Langevin said that after the Mercedes left the Ritz, it proceeded normally, along with its entourage of paparazzi on motorbikes, until it reached a traffic light at the Place de la Concorde, a few blocks away. "Everybody stopped as usual at the red light," he said. "That's when the Mercedes took off with a roar before the light turned green...
Despite these ingratiating efforts, and his considerable commitments to various charities, acceptance within the British elite has eluded al Fayed. In France his restoration of two fabled Paris properties, the Ritz Hotel and the Bois de Boulogne villa of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, earned him La Legion d'Honneur. But in Britain al Fayed could recite--and often did--a list of the many slights directed at him by the Establishment. After he poured $50 million into restoring the Windsor villa, he grumbled to the New York Times, "Not one single official said, 'Mohammed al Fayed, thank...
...taxes annually, or that all four of al Fayed's children by his second wife are British. So al Fayed struck back in 1994 and revealed to the Guardian that for more than two years he had supplied Tory Members of Parliament with cash and free stays at the Ritz Hotel in exchange for political favors. Only afterward did the government officially turn down the brothers' citizenship request, without explanation--a decision al Fayed is appealing. The scandal, meanwhile, brought down two M.P.s and fueled a public outcry that contributed to the Conservatives' defeat in last spring's general election...