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-Carlton Hotel Company arrest in 1941 on charges of tax evasion. A 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is titled, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." The 2003 movie, American Wedding used the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, as the filming location for the wedding venue. The Ritz also features in the Irving Berlin song "Puttin' On the Ritz" in which the hotel chain served as an inspiration for the titular expression, meaning to live opulently In 2015, the rapper Plies released the song "Ritz Carlton". In the song, he raps about his affinity for routinely spending time at the