Hotel Bemelmans

The adventures of the original bad boy of the New York restaurant/ hotel underbelly continue. Whether writing about the backstairs misadventures of cooks and waiters or travel to faraway lands, Bemelmans is always funny, insightful and dead on target. No one has ever surpassed the master.

Anthony Bourdain

A complete original

Saturday Review

An artist in both line and words ... with talents of gold

Observer

Very entertaining ... an excellent story-teller

Sunday Times

One reads Bemelmans not as one reads a serious novelist but for the sheer momentary pleasure given by his evocation of atmosphere and mood

Punch

A note of expensive cosmopolitan is brilliantly sustained. There are stories here that could hardly be done better

New Statesman

The singularity of Bemelmans, whether he draws or writes, is his double capacity to see freshly like a child and comment shrewdly like a grown up. The product is an awry wisdom, the wisdom of a reflective innocent who is surprised at nothing and delighted with everything

Clifton Fadiman

Mr Bemelmans is always pricking bubbles, discreetly, appreciatively, out of a sense of duty rather than a desire to shock, and the process is delightful

The Times