This is where I was born.  The building is on Hyde Park Corner, in London. 

It was originally Lanesborough House; built in 1719 for James Lane, Viscount Lanesborough.  By 1733 it had become a hospital, named after the patron saint of England, St George.  In 1827 the old building was demolished and replaced by the present building, completed in 1834.

In 1980, it closed as a hospital, and re-opened (in the old building, however) in 1991 as the Lanesborough Hotel, which it still is.

The room in which I was born looked across Knightsbridge towards Hyde Park and the Rose Garden.

A suite at the Lanesborough Hotel now costs up to £14,000 a night (US$22,000).  The restaurant is very good and it is also a good place to sit in with a coffee or a tea after a walk across the Park.

It was an extreme occasion without the trauma and fear of the earlier two births. At 12.06 am, the baby was born, the head emerging when there was no one in the room but my wife and me. The midwife was concerned that it had not come out and had gone to get a doctor: that is why she was not there. I was tempted to deliver the baby myself but I was worried that I had not washed my hands at all and so as the head emerged, as I saw it emerging, I ran to the door and shouted for the midwife who came in in time to take the shoulders with the next push and the whole baby with the next. I said to my wife “It’s out, you’ve had this baby!”.

The midwife asked if I would like to cut the cord: I said no. She cut it and gave me the baby. He was so clean: he had been washed by my wife’s waters as if he had arrived on a water chute. His hair was black and he was a lovely baby with a crumpled crying face but a perfect, perfect form; good skin, not too red, no distortion of the head or, indeed, anything else from what had been the least traumatic of all my wife’s deliveries.

This is what childbirth is thought to be and for me never has been: a wonderful and uplifting moment of pure excitement and joy, a sort of orgasm.

We left the hospital at 1 pm after a check up.  It was clear the birth was imminent.

I suggested that we have lunch at the Ritz, inspired by a reference to lunch at the Ritz in Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred which I was reading while we were at the hospital.  I fancied the luxury and pleasure of it after sitting in a windowless overheated fluorescent-lit hospital antenatal clinic for so long. 

I rang the Ritz and booked a table for 2 pm. They said there was a dress code of jacket and tie, so I changed into a green three piece suit - which remained on until the baby was delivered in due course.

Since we were lunching late, the Ritz had only a few, desultory lunchers and the atmosphere was lazy and self indulgent in the most delightful way. The sun streamed in from the french windows looking west onto Green Park and the shaft of sunlight fell only onto our table of all the occupied tables in the room. We were singled out for it.

My wife had started contractions, but they came only every 20 minutes (three times an hour) so they caused no trouble, but allowed us to look forward to the birth to come. At 4 pm we left, and walked in Green Park where a pool of spring daffodils swayed in a lovely breeze.

We still had some time to kill and went to the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery, which was my wife’s suggestion. We were in at 4.30 and it was a good exhibition which we both enjoyed - a manageable six rooms in the Sainsbury wing, and no rush because there was late opening to 9 pm. By the end, however, my wife was having contractions every 10 minutes and having to sit down a bit. We left at about 6 pm and took a cab to the hospital, where the baby was born.