The Ritz Hotel is a 133-room hotel in Picadilly in London. It was built by the Swiss hotelier Monsieur Ritz in 1906, to go with his Ritz Hotel he had already built in Paris. The hotel was often used by royalty. Different members of the Albanian royal family had used The Ritz when they visited London in 1938 and 1939. During the war it was the chosen place of many of Europe's leaders in exile. It was said that ifyou went to the reception and asked for the king they would reply "Which one?" King Zog and his family fled German-occupied France in June 1940 and came to live at The Ritz until May 1941 when they moved to Ascot in Berkshire. Today The Ritz is still one of the premier hotels in London.

.........The fall of France in the summer of 1940 led to a fresh influx of residents at the hotel and the place was soon full of refugee Royalities, aristocrats and politicians. The most celebrated of these were the Albanian Royal Family and their entourage who arrived at the hotel on 24th June 1940 after a hazardous journey by way of Greece, Turkey, Scandinavia, Holland, France Plymouth and the Great Western Hotel, Paddington. The party consisted of King Zog, his half-American Queen Geraldine, the infant Crown Prince Leka, the King's six sisters, three nephews and two nieces, his American grandmother-in-law, plus an ADC, Chamberlain, Secretary, the Albanian Charge d'Affaires from the Paris Embassy and the famous bodyguards. Some of the retinue stayed at the Athenaeum Court in Piccadilly but the King and Queen had a third-floor suite overlooking the park and half a dozen bodyguards were billeted in an upper floor. King Zog was not happy witht the hotel's air-raid shelter; he preferred something more exlusive and the Ritz accordingly converted the ladies' cloakroom for the Albanians' use as a private shelter. When a bomb landed in Piccadilly,making an enormous crater between the Berkeley and the Ritz, most of the Royal Family moved to Chelsea, but King Zog stayed put until the spring of 1941 when Lord Parmoors' house in Buckinghamshire was put at the family's disposal. Max, a waiter at the Ritz, went with the King as his butler.