On the dressing table sits the blue folder of guest services. Amid instructions for internet connection, laundry and room service, it contains details of what to do in the event of an emergency: "On hearing a continuous bell ring," it states, "please leave immediately."
In the early hours of an October morning, 25 years ago, an emergency of almost unimaginable proportion occurred here at the Grand Hotel, on Brighton's seafront; an IRA bomb, timed for the middle of the Conservative party conference, tore through its floors, killing five and injuring 34, including then-trade and industry secretary Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret. "It was such a mess," says Peter Brooke, 71. "I went down to take a look and there was dust everywhere, so much dust, masonry flung over the other side of the road and floating in the sea. I remember wondering how they'd ever clean it up."
Today the hotel has recovered its former grandeur: in the lobby, brass luggage trolleys wheel across opulent carpets, past stiff-backed armchairs, paintings of goosanders and fragrant displays of white lilies. Up its wrought-iron staircases, there is a flurry of linen-changing and vacuuming, and the bedrooms, still and quiet in the mid-morning sunshine, offer the luxury of trouser presses, bathrobes and balconies.
Outside the sky is blue. Warm weather has brought people to the beach and the promenade, sitting coatless on benches, wheeling by on bicycles, sprawling on the pebbles and playing guitar. A woman in a bathing suit stretches herself out on a promontory. Before them stands the foamy sea, behind them the steady chug of engines along the front, past the Odeon and the Brighton Centre and the Oceana club. In the distance, the old West Pier, destroyed by fire in 2003, crouches off the shore, a bundle of rust and vertebrae.
Once a health resort, Brighton became a popular destination after the arrival of the railway in 1841. It is famed for its Royal Pavilion, its marina, its electric railway and its Regency squares and terraces. It is the town where Abba won the Eurovision song contest, where Graham Greene set his novel Brighton Rock, and where, on the Whitsun weekend of 1964, mods and rockers famously clashed on its beach, throwing stones and hurling around deckchairs.
A quarter of a century has brought considerable change to Brighton. Today it is still known for its nightlife, and its streets are riddled with cocktail bars and coffee-shops, its famous Lanes playing host to endless boutiques and gift shops. "They just spring up!" says one resident. "And when they close another just springs up in its place! They're like molehills!"
The city is still one of Britain's most popular seaside destinations — 8 million people visit here every year. They come for the beach and the funfair, for the arts festival and the Great Escape and the Brighton Pride. They come for its two universities, for its medical school and its summer language schools. Sometimes they stay for ever, upping sticks to the town now affectionately known as "London-on-Sea".
On a day like today, Brighton seems so soft and mild-mannered, so perfectly placid that it is hard to imagine the events of that October day in 1984. The young girls rollerblading nearby, the boys playing basketball on the front, no one casts anything more than a cursory glance towards the Grand. The older residents remember the bomb, of course, but it seems far away now, something from another era, when Brighton was a different town altogether.
In the stamp shop near the station, Christine Chard, 47, casts her mind back. "I don't think I even realised how serious it was until I read about it in the papers," she admits, and looks out through the window, at the sun on the street and the people passing, still in summer clothes. "Was it really 25 years ago?" she wonders. "Time whizzes by."
