Grand Brighton Hotel

Hotel in Brighton, England

The hotel was bombed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the early morning of 12 October 1984 in an attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, during the Conservative Party conference. The bomb exploded at 2:51am. It had been hidden three weeks earlier behind the bath panel of room 629. Thatcher survived the bombing but five other people were killed in the attack, including Roberta Wakeham, wife of the government's Chief Whip, John Wakeham, and the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry. Norman Tebbit, a member of the Cabinet, was injured, along with his wife, Margaret, who was left paralysed.

The hotel belonged to the De Vere Group, beginning in the 1990s. De Vere Hotels undertook a multimillion pound refurbishment of The Grand, which was completed in 2013. Another refurbishment project concluded in 2019. On 15 October 2011 the Grand Hotel was inducted into the Brighton Walk of Fame and is only the third structure in Brighton to be recognised by the Walk of Fame committee. The hotel has hosted many famous guests, including ABBA, who partied in the appropriately named Napoleon Suite on the first floor following their 1974 Eurovision Song Contest win with their performance of 'Waterloo'. Other famous faces who have performed in The Grand Brighton's Empress Suite include singer Jessie J, Rizzle Kicks, The Saturdays, Elbow and Sugababes. De Vere Hotels sold the Grand in 2014 to Wittington Investments for £50 million. This company in turn sold the hotel to Leonardo Hotels, part of the Fattal Group, in February 2023. an all day dining spot which still features original 155 year old marble pillars around its central bar area.

The current manager is Andrew Mosley, who joined the hotel in May 2010. The Grand Brighton has been praised for its industry leading approach to management of employee engagement in the hospitality industry, winning 'Best Employer in UK Hospitality' at the 2019 Cateys award ceremony hosted by The Caterer.

Amongst many appearances in television and film the Grand Hotel was visited by the Trotter family in 1992 in an episode of the BBC Television comedy Only Fools and Horses entitled Mother Nature's Son. The hotel has also been featured in ITV's Coronation Street. The hotel was the subject of the documentary The Grand written and presented by Robert Longden for Southern Television. In the film Quadrophenia it was the hotel where Sting's character, Ace Face, was a bellboy.