I am 36, not six. Nevertheless, I arrive in New York with my favorite book, Eloise, packed carefully in my hand luggage. At the airport I hail a taxi, shove my bags in the back and ask the driver to take me to the Plaza Hotel. Talk about exciting.

Eloise, for anyone who has not had the good fortune to encounter her, is a fictitious six-year-old girl who lives at the Plaza. In the books by Kay Thompson, Eloise’s mother is conspicuously absent (“she knows Coco Chanel”), her nanny permanently exhausted (“Nanny gets up feeling tired, tired, tired”), and Eloise spends her days terrorizing the long-suffering hotel staff (“I am a nuisance in the lobby”).

The backdrop to her campaign of chaos is the Plaza itself, which is arguably the other main character in the book. I remember marveling at the hotel just as much as at Eloise’s antics within it. She takes us with her from the marble-pillared lobby and the revolving door emblazoned with two elegant Ps, through the endless corridors, on into the baroque ballrooms festooned with decadent chandeliers and draped curtains, and then, joyously, into her own bedroom which is always a complete........

© The Spectator