Chiltern Firehouse’s Slow Burn

At first André Balazs assumed it was a false alarm. Two weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day, he was working in his office next door to the Chiltern Firehouse, his star-studded London hotel, when the fire alarm went off.

“It was rather annoying,” he says. “One always assumes that this is a test. We’ve all been there before. You start cursing the engineer who can’t turn it off.”