Longstanding readers of Literary Review .might recall the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul. In 2003, after an argument with its manager, my late friend and co-author of a guide to Afghanistan, Matthew Leeming, described it in these pages as ‘the worst hotel in the world’. ‘Two guests have recently drowned in the swimming pool,’ he complained. ‘There is no cold water, let alone hot. Electricity is intermittent. The lifts don’t work, so I must get to my room by the service staircase and the kitchen.’ He only stayed there because the excellent bookshop sold Tajik vodka, which gave one ‘a very specialised and unpleasant form of hangover, like a new and even more unpleasant form of consciousness’.

Lyse Doucet alludes to this article in her new book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, although she is too gallant to name either the departed Leeming or Literary Review. Her book certainly presents a more balanced view of the Inter-Continental than Leeming’s article, but its purpose is wider than to redeem the hotel’s reputation. She uses the hotel as a vehicle to re-examine the modern history of Afghanistan. 

The Inter-Con, as it is universally known, opened in 1969. As Afghanistan’s first five-star hotel and Kabul’s most cosmopolitan watering hole, it has been witness to many events of moment. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, it hosted a gathering of Taliban clerics, who decided against handing over Osama bin