The Ritz Hotel, London 300 people were evacuated to the nearby May Fair Hotel following a fire alarm in the hotel. No one was hurt in the blaze, which started in the basement casino kitchen's extraction vents. The Ritz casino only suffered "minor damage". Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was convalescing at the Ritz when she died following a stroke on 8 April 2013. There has been criticism because the Ritz has not paid any corporation tax since being taken over by the Barclay twins. The accounts indicate that the profitable hotel uses a series of tax reliefs to reduce its corporation tax
The Ritz Hotel, London with a fearful eye on class prejudice", and R. Firbank had a running gag in his novels about there being "fleas in the Ritz". Later, the hotel appears in Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time". The narrator Nicholas Jenkins meets poet Mark Members at the Ritz, and the golden nymph in the Palm Court of the hotel is mentioned. William Brownlow, 3rd Baron Lurgan, who succeeded Harry Higgins as chairman of the Ritz upon his death in 1928, was especially keen on attracting American guests to the hotel. He was a close friend of the Earl of