Chawton celebrates literary women far beyond its Austen connections

I am always delighted by bits of English heritage that are thriving thanks to the money and passions of Americans. Many of these rescue stories are well known: Blenheim Palace, Hidecote Manor Gardens and Hever Castle are just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Little did I realise that Chawton House, in my own neighbourhood, is another member of the American club.

If you’re judging on the usual stately home standards of architectural grandeur or museum-quality contents, Chawton is little known and insignificant . Amongst one group, however, it’s vastly important. Serious Jane Austen fans, aka “Janeites” will know of it as the home of Jane’s brother, Edward, whose generousity gave her the time and space to write her novels. While the Austen link is important, it’s the house’s role as an advocate for and repository of the works of literary women from the Tudor through Georgian periods that makes it truly unique these days. Chawton’s survival as a heritage attraction open to visitors, and its broader literary endeavours, are due to California-born Sandy Lerner.

Lerner was a co-founder of Cisco Systems and, in classic Silicon Valley style, graduated from IT exec to investor and benefactor. With degrees in international relations and economics before she embraced computing, Lerner was more of a Renaissance being than your typical IT boffin, displayed in her subsequent involvement in animal welfare, historic home renovation and the founding of Urban Decay cosmetics. Most salient to the Chawton story, however, is Lerner’s fascination with early female writers, many of whom produced popular works in their lifetimes but were forgotten in male-curated history. When Chawton's owners in the early 1990s decided they could no longer maintain the house, Lerner’s literary passions and love of Jane Austen made her the perfect buyer. She didn’t just spearhead the restoration of a building in tenuous shape, she established a Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing (1600-1830) and donated a significant, and probably unique, collection of books by those oft-neglected writers. Though Lerner is no longer actively involved in running the place, her spirit lives on.

As someone who’s spent her whole working life in the IT industry, I can assure you that female executives are rare beasts, and senior leaders interested in history and the arts rank with dragons and hippogriffs. The Chawton story filled me with joy. More practically, so did the experience of visiting the house. 

It’s not a large place, but full of charm. Not an aristocratic residence, but the kind of small estate over which you’d find Austen characters like Mr. Knightly or Colonel Brandon presiding. Unsurprising; Jane spent a great deal of time here and it would have been a natural model. It’s a venerable, grey stone pile with two pronounced gables and a generally Jacobean appearance, though its roots are Elizabethan and the Victorians added bits. It sits three quarters of the way up a hill, woods to its back and a verdant valley at its feet, with thatch-heavy, hugely picturesque Chawton village just a 10-minute walk.

Inside, there’s a procession of pretty, panelled rooms, some hugely atmospheric hallways and all the split levels and strange corners you’d expect of a place that’s been added to bit by bit over more than 400 years without ever seeing a comprehensive makeover in any one style. Most magical, no doubt because I was already in a literary frame of mind and the house is, functionally, a giant library, were the many nooks that seemed perfect for reading or writing. The most obvious spot was labelled as the alcove that had once been Jane’s favourite, but there were armchairs in front of fires or on small landings, benches in sunlight-filled hallways and a cozy little room with a writing desk in it that invited paper-based recreation. 

Other items of interest on permanent display in the house include family portraits … a fascinating clan full of interesting women ... a striking 17th century staircase, a detailed map of early Georgian London on an enormous folding screen, armourial glass in windows and period costumes. Entering the library, tucked behind the gift shop, is by request and worth doing to see shelves packed with historic tomes you've probably never heard of. Here was the only disappointment of touring Chawton. Quite understandably, you have to be supervised by a staff member when you're looking at this precious collection, and unless you're a registered academic who's made a request in advance you can't take anything down to read. If you love books, it's like walking into a lavish bakery when you're on Weight Watchers.

The shop can assuage that unfulfilled hunger; it's a small but beautifully curated selection of books, literary-themed gifts and country house-influenced homeware. 

Upstairs, two rooms serve as galleries for temporary exhibitions, mostly drawn from the books in the library. There's none of the fancy set design, lighting and projection I recently wrote about in my article on the Museum of Danish Resistance, but there’s still a strong effort here at storytelling … even if what you’re looking at is mostly books and documents. The current exhibition is Trailblazers: Women travel writers and the exchange of knowledge. Obviously, a topic near and dear to my heart.

None of these early women set out to earn money off the descriptions of their journeys. Most travelled for other reasons, from their husbands' jobs to escapism to enjoying the same grand tours as their brothers. Many had outrageous adventures beyond the imaginations of modern professionals: imprisonment, shipwreck, death of the travelling companion who was their reason for travel, revolution. Unsurprisingly, their adventures made for some fabulous literature, much of it sadly no longer in print. 

We meet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who accompanied her ambassador husband to the Ottoman court, and amongst other wonders wrote about successful vaccinations 75 years before Jenner “invented” the smallpox vaccine in England. Hester Stanhope, niece and hostess to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, went travelling across the Eastern Mediterranean, became an early archeologist, went native and never came home. Maria Graham accompanied her naval officer husband around the world, started writing about her travels and eventually earned her living from writing after her husband died. 

These are just a few of the fascinating heroines you get to meet. On display are their notes and published books, plus ephemera like 19th century grand tourists’ calling cards, historic passports and letters of transit (ones from the Ottoman Empire are spectacularly beautiful), sketches and watercolours. Curators add a bit of fun with a “passport” you can pick up at the start and “stamp” with different locations as you learn about each of the women in the spotlight. The exhibition continues until 26 February.

Chawton has a surprising number of special events given its humble size, including upcoming lectures on the exhibition, snowdrop walks and a Valentine's Day dinner in its old kitchen, all listed on its website. General admission is free for Historic Houses Association members. An adult day ticket is £12.

Related stories:

- Chawton Cottage is amongst the sites I mention in my roundup of North Hampshire highlights

-A "Hawk Walk" in Chawton House grounds is the perfect gift for someone who needs nothing

-Jane Austen sites make for a grown up hen do

-A walk around Steventon and its lush environs

Algarve on the Baltic: Vistas’ pop up brings sunny, Michelin delight to Danish Christmas break

Can you claim to have dined at a Michelin-starred restaurant if the chef has temporarily re-located and you’re eating at his short-term pop up? Beyond deciding whether or not I file this story in my Michelin index, the answer doesn’t really matter. But the contemplation of it brought great delight to our Christmas holiday season. We have a Portuguese chef named Rui Silvestre to thank.

Dining in Silvestre’s one-star Vistas would require a trip to a golf club in Portugal’s Algarve, probably quite a sensible idea in late December. Silvestre headed north instead, running a six-week satellite version of his restaurant in the Japanese pagoda at Tivoli. The two locations share a great view, and a lot of seafood, but just about everything else is different.

Silvestre, who’s keen on fusion cuisine and expanded his Portuguese childhood and African and Indian heritage with early cheffing experiences in France, Hungary and Switzerland, reportedly wanted to experience the culinary capital that is Denmark for a while. And Denmark certainly welcomed him, with a sold-out run and deep appreciation for food that put the warmth of sunnier climes on plates while freezing rain slicked the paths outside.

Like our New Year’s Eve dinner at Aamanns, the experience was chef’s menu only, wine flight included, pre-paid upon booking. Still-fresh memories of Covid made this feel like a risky proposition, especially for a chef we’d never heard of, but we opted in. The risk resulted in our best meal of the holiday, and probably the second best of the year after our magnificent, outrageously profligate anniversary meal at Clare Smyth’s Core.

Silvestre’s menu, called 9 Magic Spices, travelled around the world celebrating the power of exotic spice. We warmed up our appetites with a glass of champagne, cod croquettes and a Japanese-Portuguese take on tempura green beans with a side of garlic mayo that would have made a fine meal on its own if served as a larger portion. But an ocean of fish was to come after a palate-cleansing serving of home-made bread with Danish butter and a Moroccan dish of carrots three ways that was as much a testimony to the potential of harissa as to the humble root vegetable.

The first fish to swim onto our plate came via Portugal. One of Vistas’ iconic dishes is a lip-smacking tuna tartare, served in a foam of cauliflower, with streaks of cauliflower and wasabi cream across the top and crowned with a shimmering dollop of caviar. It was easy to see why this would become a restaurant’s trademark. 

Next was the Silvestre family curry, complementing a tender scallop and given texture by tapioca and crisped rice. (Some people aren’t fond of the texture of tapioca; I found its addition to a savoury curry dish a surprising delight.) Then came hake on a creamy rice, risotto-like in texture, heavily laced and vibrant green with coriander, yet balanced so artfully that the coriander-hater across the table didn’t mind. 

The final savoury dish brought the Portuguese tradition of Christmas salt cod north, served with a velvety turnip purée that you wouldn’t think possible to get out of that humble vegetable. Instead of sauce, the cod was dripping with cured egg yolks and strips of pickled turnip added crunch. The curing and pickling brought a touch of the Danish to the dish.

Pudding was an entertaining take on milk and cookies for Santa, with one large, cinnamon-laced biscuit separating a “milk mousse” … somewhere between whipped cream and ice cream … below and a quenelle of cinnamon ice cream above. 

All of this, plus a delightful procession of white wines and a tawny port for dessert, had been served with detailed commentary and luminous cheerfulness by a staff brought in its entirety from the Portuguese mother ship. Their attitude was quite extraordinary given the dreadful weather. Coming north from balmy seafronts is exciting when you have the chance of blankets of fluffy snow to drape classic Christmas scenes, but nobody can celebrate glowering grey skies and perpetual rain. Yet the Vista’s team kept smiling, delighted to serve as ambassadors to their warmer homeland.

To be fair, they were blessed with a great view and a continuous panorama of windows to appreciate it through. While I’d walked by the Japanese pagoda on numerous visits to Tivoli I’d never noticed that its base layer was an all-glass space that could be put to use as a restaurant. It sits on the edge of the park’s lake, with every direction offering up festive scenes outlined by coloured lights. Whatever the weather, as long as you’re warm and dry it’s like sitting in the middle of a fairy land.

There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, the Danes are fond of saying. And it’s worth dressing properly to drink in the wonders of this proto-Disneyland at Christmas. It was my third time seeing the park in its holiday finery and I swear they put up more lights every year. Christmas market booths add to the retail opportunities and sell traditional Danish glogg (mulled wine), best spiked with a shot of rum. One advantage of this year’s weather: the glogg didn’t chill within 5 minutes as it did on my first, more Baltic experience. It’s not just the buildings and rides that are outlined with light. The trees themselves glitter, with the willows around the lake offering a particularly beguiling vision. I can’t imagine how much time it takes to run lights down the scores of trailing branches that give the trees their magnificent undulation. 

Though Silvestre’s pop-up was a one off, holiday dining at Tivoli is not. There are many fine options here, and it’s a Copenhagen tradition to combine a meal out with taking in the lights. Just make sure you book in advance, as it’s unlikely you’ll be able to walk in anywhere. Note that admission to Tivoli is separate, costing about £15. So if you’re dining there, build time in for exploring the gardens and checking out all the holiday displays. You can’t get to the restaurants without the park entry, so why waste the admission fee?

After nine courses laced with sunshine and exoticism, plunging into the cold, wet night was a shock. Even the fireworks and laser show over the lake didn’t tempt us to dawdle. Instead we made a concentrated, damp march to the front entrance, fighting to hold on to the memories of cumin, coriander, cinnamon, turmeric and the rest. Fortunately, Tivoli being one of the main tourist attractions in town, there was a warm, dry taxi waiting to whisk us to our hotel. It wasn’t quite like spilling out onto a beach in the Algarve, but it worked for us.

Storytelling transforms education at the Museum of Danish Resistance

Many people, bored senseless on school trips to museums, carry an ambivalence towards them through

their lives. Though their experience is the polar opposite of mine, I do understand. Museums have traditionally been austere, academic places with items stuffed in glass cases or hanging on walls. Context and appreciation was left to the viewer. A new storytelling approach to museum design is overturning that world, and Copenhagen's newly reopened Museum of the Danish Resistance is an excellent example of what's possible.

I was a good test case. Though I'm happy in any art museum or temple to ancient cultures, my eyes start to glaze with boredom when we get to World War II. No offence meant to that particular conflict, it’s just that my interest in all history and culture fades from the Industrial Revolution. But this was one of my husband's happy places, and accompanying him was only fair after dragging him through Rosenborg yet again. 

Several of his relatives had been significant players in the resistance, and this was a favourite museum of his childhood. He and his family were devastated when the place was destroyed by a fire set by an arsonist in 2013. Most of the collection had been saved, but the museum site was beyond repair. Over the next seven years curators and architects totally re-invented the museum, with a new building and a new way of telling the resistance story.

I loved it. And the reason, undoubtably, is that the curators have put storytelling at the heart of the museum.

It all starts with architecture to set the scene. The rather grim, round, almost windowless stone building is inspired by military pillboxes, and definitely looks like a defensive bastion was dropped in the middle of an otherwise peaceful park. The outside walls are strung with wires, clearly anticipating a camouflage of vines to come. If you think it looks entirely too small to contain a museum, you’d be right. The tower only holds the entry lobby, ticket office, gift shop, and cafe on the floor above. The museum itself is in a much larger basement excavated below the park.

Underground … a suitable location for a museum to deeds done in secret … you start your visit in an empty government office in the wee hours of the morning of the 9th of April, 1940, as the Germans occupied the country with high speed and low resistance. Danes woke up to a new overlord, though their local government institutions would stay in place for four more years. Some Danes were angry, some ambivalent and some enthusiastic; the museum does an excellent job of showing how confusion and hesitancy hardened to dislike and active resistance with time.

The galleries step through that timeline using artefacts, news reports, videos and atmospheric sets to trace this history. But the real storytelling is left to five individuals: two students, two communists and one collaborator with the Germans. We see them as shadowy silhouettes but hear them tell their stories. For the first half of the experience I suspected these were fictional composites, so compelling were they. But gradually the words seemed so sincere and the actions so honest I suspected the curators had found five “truth is stranger than fiction” narratives and built the museum around real people. And, sure enough, that’s the truth. The very last gallery provides the photos and the epilogues for the individuals you’ve come to know. There’s all the tragedy, retribution and joy you could ask for from a streaming series, but it’s here in a museum instead.

The most moving gallery for me was, unsurprisingly, the one about the evacuation of the Jews. In what many consider to be the Danes’ finest hour, the population and the resistance came together to smuggle the majority of the nation’s Jews out of the country just before the Germans were due to round them up. The gallery has photos, clothing and mementos from people who escaped, but the emotion lies in standing next to a full sized fishing boat, in atmospheric half light, watching the silhouette of our new friend Jørgen pace the dock as he tells us about the dangers of the evening. It’s like being inside history.

The most interactive and entertaining bit was the gallery on intelligence operations, where you could get hands on with several activities to test your spying skills. At one set of desks you could translate intercepted messages using a coded system to which you’d been given a key. At another you could tap phone lines and get points for spotting key pieces of information worth passing on. It was great fun, though any merriment is kept in check by the true story of a resistance member who chomped a cyanide tablet when caught on a mission rather than risk giving up information to the Germans under torture.

Someday all museums will be like this, and the world will be better for it. Meanwhile, if you’re in Copenhagen head to the Resistance Museum to see how historical storytelling should be done. If you’re going to see the Little Mermaid (underwhelming but required for first timers) you’ll be walking right by it. As long as you’re in the area, you can double down on national tradition and have a Danish lunch at Cafe Petersborg. While you’re at it, raise a glass of snaps to those brave men and women who wedged thorns into the sides of the German occupiers for five long years.

Rosenborg is the crown jewel of Danish palaces

Rosenborg Castle was my favourite amongst all the wonders my then-fiancé introduced me to on my first trip to Denmark 14 years ago. I hadn't been back since. Would it retain its appeal? Yes. This moderately-sized urban palace is a jewel box of treasures too great to appreciate properly in just one visit. It was even better the second time around.

If there's one king to remember in Denmark's long history, it's Christian IV. A classic Renaissance man

whose passions embraced the arts, science, trade and government, he ruled over a Danish golden age and left an indelible mark on both politics and infrastructure. Many of the country's best cathedrals and palaces have some link to him, but Rosenborg feels most indelibly connected. It may be because the ground floor rooms are heavily as he would have recognised them, or that the Crown Jewels he created are here. 

That brings up another of the glories of Rosenborg: its £15 adult admission fee is a bargain, giving you two attractions for the price of one. The palace provides enough art and architecture to satisfy any hard core tourist, while the treasury is a glorious collection of luxury items that could easily stand on its own. 

Most people will start in the palace, a good move to get the sense of the people who lived here before you go look at their jewellery box.

Though Christian established the place as a country retreat in 1606 (amusing as a decent runner could get to the city palace in 5 minutes), descendants added and redecorated for the next 200 years, making it a pastiche of what you’d describe, if English, as Jacobean, Georgian and a bit of baroque. And using English terms isn’t that far-fetched, since the English and Danish royal families regularly inter-married. Christian IV’s sister married James I of England and gave birth to Charles I (the one who lost his head),  the sister of British King George III (the one who lost the American colonies) married Danish King Christian VII (an unfortunate match chronicled in the excellent film A Royal Affair) and the current British King’s great grandmother came to England as the Danish Princess Alexandra. 

The Danes had a particularly good 17th century. The lower rooms show it, in an opulent style rich with gleaming, intricately carved woods, shining marble floors in black and white diamond pattern, and loads of Northern European, old masters’ style paintings. One of the sights most indicative of the sheer luxury, however, are simple holes in the floor. Christian used to keep an orchestra in the cellar to play, allowing the music to waft up from below; an early all-house sound system. There are some marvellous ceilings here, encrusted with all the three-dimensional skills of the plasterer’s art. 

The family had a particular love for silver furniture and Italian pietra dura table tops, which are in abundance throughout but most evident on this ground floor. The marble room is my favourite in this range. It’s a relatively small place but packs a punch. The standard diamond pattern on the floor has morphed into a much busier pattern of squares, the walls are now marble-effect paintwork with pietra dura panelled insets and hung with sliver-framed mirrors, and an almost comically ornate ceiling is full of heraldic symbols from the royal crest. We’re in full Baroque mode this time, but the size of the room suggests the Danes were almost a bit embarrassed to be going so far over the top. It’s a very restrained foray into Italian madness. 

The first floor is a bit more of a hotch-potch of styles, heavy on busy Baroque interiors with a few more restrained late 18th century spaces and one bit that veers into Napoleonic neo-classicism. The tapestry-hung rooms packed with art and lavish furniture tend to run together, but there are some you can’t help but remember. Frederick IV’s hall is at one end of the building, with windows on three sides overlooking the gardens, so flooded with light even on a gloomy day.  In the centre, under a spectacular rock crystal chandelier, is a pietra dura table so beautiful it stands out from the many others in the palace, and has become a bit of a hallmark of the place; socks and scarves borrowing its patterns available in the gift shop. There’s also an extraordinary mirrored room built into one of the projecting towers, with walls, ceiling and floor all reflecting to infinity.

Following a broad circular staircase within another tower up once more brings you to a single, long gallery that runs the length of the building. This is the room that probably gets photographed the most here, and that’s no surprise. Though meant as a ballroom, it’s set up as a throne room with thrones, canopies and magnificent, life-sized silver lions guarding them. (Londoners can see exact copies of the big cats in the Victoria and Albert’s silver section.) A barrel-vaulted ceiling stretches above. Red, black and white diamonds of marble make up the floor below. The walls are covered with tapestries picturing Danish action on land and sea in a 17th century war, fantastically detailed and in such perfect condition and colour it’s hard to believe they’re more than 300 years old. Just above them, in relief so high they’re almost coming out of the wall, are almost life-sized stucco soldiers marching off to war.

Tower rooms opening off the main hall offer display space for a suite of silver furniture, a magnificent collection of glass and a rotating display, currently focusing on past queens. Artefacts included Queen Louise’s shotgun. Danish women were expected to shoot as well as the men; the only concession to the queen’s femininity was some additional padding to cushion recoil, otherwise her shotgun matched her husband’s. In another case lay Queen Caroline Mathilde’s garters, confiscated from the possession of court doctor Johann Struense and used in his trial. They’d become lovers, outside of her unhappy marriage and given tacit approval by her ineffectual husband, King Christian VII. But they got up to more than romance, spearheading significant political reforms that went too far for courtiers who brought them both down. It’s the story of A Royal Affair, mentioned above, and makes the seemingly innocent strips of embroidered cloth far more poignant. 

There are happier stories to be told in the treasury; downstairs, outside and then back in to the well-protected cellars. These aren’t just the accoutrements of royal ceremony you see at the Tower of London. Before you get to that stuff you have two enormous galleries packed with wonders to explore. Solid gold toy soldiers with jewelled eyes line up for battle. Scores of ivory objects show off virtuoso carving; you can loose yourself in single tusks carved into figures inside cages inside screens. Some of the ivory treasures were carved by members of the royal family, who studied with masters. 

Decorative gun barrels and sword hilts show off the capabilities of weaponry as works of art. There are exquisite walking sticks, beautiful clocks, ornate vases, caskets and cups. Precious objects are fashioned into everyday things, elevating them to magnificence: rock crystal punch bowls, amber goblets, pietra dura portrait miniatures. There’s even a set of ceremonial drapery for a horse, encrusted with seed pearls and stiff with embroidery. The matching set of armour has elephant heads fancifully forming the shoulders and tip of the helmet (the elephant being a heraldic beast of Denmark). Some items are so ornate as to be positively ugly: a fashion to collect Roman cameos and then set them like barnacles on the outside of tableware should have been illegal.

Overall, the collection is what I like to classify as royal tchotchkes, and these two rooms are on par with — though not quite as big as — my favourite kunstkammer display inside the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. But it’s just the opening act. Follow a staircase further down, go through an enormous safe door and find the real treasure.

This deep, subterranean gallery of three interlocking octagonal rooms is watched by a guard at its centre and, no doubt, by many more on video. Despite the high security, however, you’re allowed to take photos of the objects on display here, something absolutely forbidden with the British Crown Jewels. The walls, floor, ceiling and display backgrounds are all black or grey, and the lighting carefully pinpointed on the treasures, so you’re almost overwhelmed by the sparkle of the diamonds in the cases before you. 

There are multiple crowns here, my favourite being Christian IV’s renaissance masterpiece.

Chains of chivalric orders hang next to exquisite, detailed ornaments. 

Sceptres are as delicate as flowers.

Four centuries of precious ornament convene here, but it’s the early stuff crafted for Christian IV and his children that I love the most. Whether it’s the castle above or the treasures beneath it, Denmark’s most memorable king left magic behind at Rosenborg

25Hours Copenhagen confirms my preference for this hip, vibrant chain

The challenge wasn't 25 hours, but 240. 

We'd decided to stay the entirety of the Christmas and New Year break in Copenhagen, and wanted a comfortable home base that wouldn't cost a fortune. My instinct was to hit VRBO and rent an apartment; my husband argued that by Christmas we'll be totally exhausted and we'd want others to do the cooking and cleaning. On that, he had an excellent point. Problem was, Copenhagen hotels tend to default to austere Nordic design, and those we knew had limited public spaces. The hunt was on for a great location and generously sized room complemented by lots of comfortable communal areas where we could feel at home throughout the holidays. 

The 25Hours Hotel Copenhagen delivered.

I'd discovered the chain in Paris three years ago, and was impressed by the way they managed to bring a boutique feel to an enormous hotel. The same is true in Copenhagen, though the design was different. The Berlin-based chain explains that the atmosphere and ambition is the same across their locations -- "provocative urban locations, irreverent yet functional aesthetic, and the romantic nostalgia of grand hotels" according to their website -- but each is created by a local team with its own look and feel. 

The Copenhagen branch is next the the round tower, or Rundetaarn, a Renaissance observatory attached to Trinitatis church and a just a few blocks from Rosenborg Palace and its gardens. This is the heart of the old town, or Indre By, and there aren’t many hotels here. (They’re more often clustered around the harbour or Tivoli and the central train station.) I loved the location. Copenhagen is so small that you could still walk to the main tourist sights, but Indre By opened up a whole new world of restaurants that seemed less touristy, plus offered abundant shopping. If you don’t feel like walking, the enormous Nørreport station is just three blocks away, with connections to metro, suburban and regional trains. While bustling during the day, the neighbourhood is quiet at night. Our room looked over one of the main shopping streets, Købmagergade, which was almost completely deserted once shops closed. On New Year’s Eve it was also the route to the palace for the changing of the guard, complete with high holiday brass band.

The early 19th century building started life as a porcelain factory and then became a university building, blessed with high ceilings, thick walls and enormous windows. Designers have used loads of colour and pattern, and the rooms have a bit of an industrial chic feel to channel the factory origins. Rooms come in single, medium and large. We’d booked the last, given the length of our stay and the time we expected to be lounging in the room. On a shorter trip, the medium would have been ample. 

Tall, open shelving units, half-walls and a narrow stand with a large TV on top broke a large space into four distinct areas: a dressing, storage and entry spot just inside the door; a sitting area with desk, sofa, chair, stool and coffee table, a bathroom done in cheery burgundy and white geometric tiles with separate rooms for the toilet and an enormous shower, and the sleeping area with a large, comfortably-dressed king-sized bed. Butter yellow walls to a rail a few feet below the ceiling, aqua-green above, a lighter olive  green on the floor-to-ceiling curtains and a variety of fabrics with bursts of bright colour brought cheer to the room, even though the sun only came out briefly once in 10 days. 

As a writer, I’m a fan of the chain’s thoughtful use of language. You’re greeted in the room with a hand-written welcome note and a variety of materials about the hotel and the local area that are beautifully composed in breezy, modern language with a wry sense of humour throughout. Instead of the usual “do not disturb” sign there’s a “25Reasons” booklet that allows you to choose from red pages (we’re up to no good in here, keep out) or green (help, we’ve made a mess!). Guests clearly love this small innovation as most hang the book out with their chosen phrase for the day from amongst the 25. All the signage is fun and direct. And it’s all in a similar “voice” to that used by the attentive, friendly staff who feel like friends from the moment of check-in. That kind of attention to brand delights me.

Public spaces include a lounge/library with two enormous sofas and an ottoman in front of a fire often crackling with dry wood; a listening room with a record player, tape deck and collections of vinyl and cassette (the record player was sadly broken when we were there); a work room with a long communal table and chairs; and an enormous, glass roofed atrium called “the assembly hall” that I’d guess was once a courtyard between the different buildings cobbled together to make the hotel. There’s another open fire with a sofa and comfortable chairs in the restaurant, Neni, where breakfast is served. It’s an excellent place to settle if you’re staying in for the morning. 

25Hours Copenhagen comes with one negative, and one warning.

Breakfast was disappointing. If you’re not a frequent visitor to Denmark, you may not notice this. But with a fair amount of experience in the usual Danish breakfast buffet of meats and cheeses, 25Hours was underwhelming. In a town obsessed with local sourcing, the offerings felt like a generic, global corporate chain. It’s the only place that cool brand slipped. 

I missed the classic Danish Rullepølse that’s usually on the breakfast table and more obviously Danish cheeses. Pastry offerings were limited, and were obviously of the bulk, bake from frozen variety rather than the wienerbrød and the like that’s so delicious in this part of the world. There was also a warm buffet with eggs, sausages and bacon, but I found the last two so laden with salt I was thirsty for the rest of the day. The booking system allows you to choose your package with or without breakfast. For our long stay over the holidays, “with” made sense. If I were returning for a short break, I’d skip the in-house dining and go across the yard in front of the hotel to the excellent pastry shop.

The warning: Think carefully before booking with children. The local designers clearly thought Copenhagen was synonymous with sexy weekend. The pattern on the floor to ceiling curtains in our room seemed abstract on first glance, but was in fact writhing naked couples in an array of creative embraces. Settle into that lovely library room with the fireplace and you’ll notice that the books on the shelves are mostly on sex and sexuality, the floral painting above the fireplace looks remarkably like a vulva and there’s a poster from an exhibition about sex toys with a drawing of an 18th century woman preparing herself with her right hand to consume the treat she’s holding in her left. My husband found my “puritanical American shock” amusing, but I think most Brits I know would be uncomfortable with the questions the decor might prompt from children. Keep 25Hours for the grownups.

Aamanns 1921, irresponsible fireworks make a memorable New Year's Eve

Visiting Iceland in the depths of winter forever branded that country for me as "the land that health and safety forgot". (Story here.) After New Year's Eve in Copenhagen, I'm wondering if that attitude comes direct from their former colonial masters, the Danes. 

Watching turn-of-the-year fireworks from Copenhagen's Town Hall Square, the Rådhuspladsen, is like getting caught in the heart of a fireworks factory as it burns down around you. Official displays combine with scores of DIY contributions from fellow revellers for utter mayhem. Despite the density of the crowds, people are letting off multi-charge fireworks boxes with no more than a few feet of clear space. Others are holding Roman candles as they spit out their fountains of light. Given the effort it took us to get to anything approximating open space once we decided to head home, the potential for a dangerous stampede should anything go wrong was enormous. I didn't see a single police officer organising things, yet all was well. 

Still, I remember thinking that I was very glad we'd fortified ourselves with a Michelin-rated New Year's Eve meal in one of the world's culinary capitals in advance. Had I died by firework or crush that night, my last meal would have been one to remember.

The standard for New Year's Eve dining out in Copenhagen seems to be chef's menus with wine pairings, all in, paid in advance. Which is a big commitment to make months bfore, at a place you've never tried. Everything at Tivoli had pushed their prices into the stratosphere, so we opted for a well-reviewed spot close to our hotel. 

Aamanns 1921 is a restaurant famous for elevating Danish open sandwiches -- the famous smørrebrød -- to fine dining standards, and appears in many top travel guides as the best in Copenhagen for that style of dining. For dinner they flip to upscale modern Danish, heavy on local, organic sourcing and specialist touches like a variety of snaps flavoured in house. The location mirrors the style of food to come: on a venerable old side street, behind a facade that probably has been there since 1921, beneath rugged old stone arches lies a beautifully designed, modern space of blonde woods, creamy leather banquettes and striking brass chandeliers that could qualify as modern art.  Tradition meets cutting edge. The New Year's menu was 10 glorious courses ... though some came at the same time for practicality's sake ... with matching wines. 

I’m beginning to get a feel for what differentiates Danish haut cuisine, and it was all here: abundant sea food, the ability to get maximum flavour out of root vegetables, pickled fruit and veg often showing up in surprising ways, and a love of fresh herbs … particularly dill. We began the meal with four “starter” courses served at once with a classic dry champagne. Neither one of us is an oyster fan, but things looked up considerably with an oversized baton of toasted brioche saturated with truffle, and beef tartare in a pastry case. The mind-blower, however, was a savoury take on the classic Danish aebleskiver. Normally, these are apple-filled donuts about the size of a golf ball, cooked by flipping them around a special pan with half-circle shaped cups and then dusting them with powdered sugar. Here, the batter was savoury and the balls were billiard ball sized and unstuffed, waiting for you to tear them open and fill with a mix of soured cream, caviar and fresh chives. One of the stars of the meal and the one we're most likely to try at home. (Yes, of course we have an aebleskiver pan.)

Next came some of the best gravlax I’ve ever had; delicate yet packed with flavour, elevated with potent dill oil. Herbal oil also added spark to the next course, beautifully poached cod topped with a rose crafted from slices of poached beetroot. The third fish course was the kind of profligate blockbuster you want to see in the New Year, however. Lobster claws in buttery sauce in one dish, beside it a lobster custard made with the head meat. Both to be consumed with segments from a fresh, pillowy bread roll. It was the richest, most flavour-packed lobster dish imaginable, no doubt in part because of an outrageous fat content.

To be honest, we didn’t really need another savoury course, but sirloin of beef with pomme purée laced with more truffles continued the excessive spirit of the evening. And beef finally made way for a red wine: a debate-provoking Barolo that worked for me but was proclaimed a little thin by Mr. B. (The procession of white wines that had matched all those fish courses took us around Europe with pleasing variety, though offered no surprises.)

Dessert defied fine dining convention with the simplicity of cake and ice cream; multiple layers of chocolate sponge and ganache so dense with cocoa it would have been too much without the complementing cream. The star of the sweets, however, was the petit fours that came after. Chocolate truffles, fruit jellies and caramel are standard fare with the coffee, but it was the kransekage that made for a blockbuster ending. For special occasions, this Danish holiday confection is often made in rings and stacked to form a tree shape. The ingredients are simply almonds, sugar and egg whites, but getting the balance right so that its slightly crunchy on the outside, slightly gooey in the middle and holds the shape you want is fiendishly difficult. (Trust me, I've tried and failed.) These, shaped as quenelles with a zigzag of white icing above and dipped in chocolate on their base, were perfect.

Some other night I would have stayed to linger over one of Aamanns home-made snaps flavours, but the fireworks beckoned. It was a straight, 10-minute stroll down Skindergade from the restaurant, adding to the entertainment of the night as we realised this is clearly a main drag for nightclubs. No doubt just like their counterparts in Manchester, New York and Tokyo, girls more intent on showing off their fit bodies than staying warm cued with boys with excessive hair product and skin tight jeans to get past gruff bouncers. We pulled our coats tighter and gave thanks that we're old enough, and married enough, to prioritise dressing sensibly over being sexy. 

Sensible is, however, a challenge when it's five degrees (41F) and raining steadily. (My husband, who grew up here, kept observing it should be five below, not above.) Rain gear isn't really warm enough, and warm coats are rarely waterproof. I'd packed for warmth and was soaked by the end of the evening. The downpour, however, didn't dampen the fuse on the cacophony of fireworks that was already under way when we reached the Rådhuspladsen at 11:30. At that time you could still make your way through the square to a good viewing position, but within 15 minutes the space was full. We'd already missed the Tivoli fireworks, but the skies above were vivid with other contributions. In puddles of space around the square citizens were igniting their own displays, while others seemed to be coming from building tops and thus, one assumed, were official. 

In London we're used to the countdown, the solemn bongs of Big Ben, then the kisses, good wishes and fireworks. In Copenhagen, just like Reykjavik, it's almost impossible to tell when midnight actually falls. Yes, there's a clock tower on the city hall, but by 10 minutes to midnight the drifting smoke from all those explosives had limited visibility. Individuals rely on their own timekeeping and uncork bottles accordingly while the fireworks build to a crescendo. For about 20 minutes roughly around midnight the level of sound and light is at its peak. There is no one display to look at, the air is simply exploding at every point around you.

There were more fireworks in other squares on our way home, and bangs and sizzles outside our hotel windows until at least 3am. I drifted off to sleep contemplating an irony. Raised in the conservative heartland of the United States, I was taught that any form of socialism yielded control to a nanny state that would strip you of all individual rights. Yet here, in an officially Social Democratic state, I'd just witnessed a totally unregulated, Wild West extravaganza of dangerous firework usage that wouldn't be permitted anywhere beneath the Stars and Stripes. It would be an amusing discussion to have with some Americans over a long, snaps-fuelled lunch at Aamanns 1921.