I'm unsure what's "intriguing" you.

Like many hotels in London, the place started out as something else - in this case a block of posh flats, developed in the late 19th century by a conman, bankrupted and for the next century or so constantly having bits of it occupied by different organisations. So close to the centre of government, those intermittent tenants have included all sorts of political and governmental organisations: a slug got turned into an extraordinarily dull and frowsy hotel in the early 1970s, which expanded into more of the building in the 1980s.

The hotel's parent company (the generally OK to awful Thistle Hotels) got acquired by a Singaporean investment co a couple of years ago, and this place, plus a couple of other once seedy, but centrally located, hotels in the group got subsequently rebranded and refurbished.

I've used the building in all sorts of guises over the past 40-odd years (bits of the building are still a gentlemen's club I was once a member of, for example, and other bits include a modest-sized but well located conference centre where I occasionally pontificate). It's exceptionally quiet, and some rooms have great views (others, even in the hotel, have perfect, uninterrupted, views of a brick wall).

Personally, I preferred the place when more was a gentlemen's club. It's now a spruce - and no doubt better run, though Basil Fawlty himself could hardly have matched the old Thistle group for inept hotel management - anonymous Posh Hotel in a location that's very handy for some people. But it's now got all the individuality and charm of a Dubai Marriott.