MEDIUM RARE 
 

Nine months to carry a baby to full term, two years to sit out a virus. At long last, with the health emergency status induced by Covid-19 finally lifted, life is normal enough now to indulge in moments of serenity while reading a book.

Specially a book as elegant to look at and hold between two hands as the coffee table book of The Manila Hotel, True Heart of the Philippines. It’s about the hotel with a history – from Burnham’s “beautiful cities” concept to World War 2, from 1912 to 2023, all 111 years of hospitality – no other hotel in these 7,000 islands speaks such eloquence in such charming terms. As a historian might put it, if these walls could speak!

If they could speak a second language, it would be that of a warm, gracious welcome, a promise of gracious living, if only for a day, a night, an afternoon for tea, coffee, alone or with company. Wasn’t it Churchill who said a hotel is home minus the chores? Except that this hotel lets you forget the time zone you’re in. “Tread softly lest you tread on my dreams.”

The book takes full advantage of complete editorial freedom from the owners of the hotel and their sister company, Manila Bulletin Publishing Co., who neither prescribed the number of pages nor set a production budget. In 160 pages between the covers, of which there are four, the most casual reader will immediately feel immersed in the glow of warm wood under the soft light of a constellation of capiz-shell chandeliers. Not only does the hotel own generations of stories collected from guests and visitors, it is the only one with distinct architectural features – and space and spaces galore, including a secret garden, a basement tucked away – that an interior designer would kill for to claim as his or her own solo masterpiece.

It’s nothing if not a supremely photogenic hotel anywhere you look, which was why photographer Sonny Espiritu considered the job not work but an eye-opener for himself and his camera. Layout artist Bonn Erasmo was forced out of retirement relaxing in his farm in Quezon, otherwise the author-editor would’ve had him arrested.

A beautiful hotel deserves a beautiful book.