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 vibration. The internal walls consist of "hollow, porous, terra-cotta blocks" covered with plaster, and the hotel's flooring was also made fireproof. At the corners of the pavilion roofs of the Ritz are large green copper lions, the emblem of the hotel. The hotel was designed mainly by London and Paris based designers in the Louis XVI style, which is consistent throughout, giving the hotel its "special atmosphere of perfect appropriateness and elegant restraint". Marcus Binney describes the great suite of ground-floor rooms as "one of the all-time masterpieces of hotel architecture" and compares it to a royal palace with its