“House of Guinness,” as in the famous Dublin brewery, begins with the disclaimer “inspired by true facts,” which is another way of saying, “Don’t believe everything you’ll see.” Or, in “Dragnet”-speak, “Names have not been changed, and we have no desire or obligation to protect the innocent. This is a drama, and anyway, you can’t libel the dead.” The framing may be sound, but the portraits are imaginary.
The unchanged names in the series, which premieres Thursday on Netflix, belong to the four children of Benjamin Lee Guinness, whose grandfather created the signature porter in 1778. They are Arthur (Anthony Boyle), Edward (Louis Partridge), Anne (Emily Fairn) and Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea). As we begin, it is 1868 and Benjamin Lee, just deceased, has left the brewery in equal shares to Arthur, who has been away in London for five years losing his accent and finding peace, and Edward, who has been pretty much running the place. Anne, only a woman, and a married one, is basically skipped over; and Benjamin, who has problems with drink and gambling, is given a small allowance, because, as expressed in his late father’s will, “I feel it wise not to burden Benjamin with the temptations that come with fortune.”
As seen here, neither Arthur nor Edward, whose professional expertise is mostly represented by signing papers and occasionally walking around his factory — you won’t learn anything about how Guinness is made — seems capable of running a brewery. But all that really matters to the show is that each is a tortured romantic and will have to find a way to thrive in their uneasy, unasked-for partnership.
Indeed, as a viewer in search of entertainment rather than enlightenment, it’s best to treat these characters, however much attached they are to the real people whose names they bear, as entirely fictional. There are also, of course, characters mixed up in this business who have no factual counterparts, and by virtue of their fates not being written in books or Wikipedia pages, are subject to the whims of series creator Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders,” “A Thousand Blows,”), creating opportunities for suspense that might otherwise be lacking.
Prime among these creations are Sean Rafferty (James Norton), the Guinness family fixer, a handsome brute whom the ladies like, and the beautiful, brilliant Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack), a Catholic firebrand who sees a better way toward Irish independence than throwing rocks at old man Guinness’ hearse or setting beer barrels on fire; for some reason, the Fenians, epitomized by Ellen’s “bonehead” brother Patrick (Seamus O’Hara), a grating presence and no advertisement for the movement, have decided that targeting Guinness (rich, Protestant) is going to get them somewhere.
James Norton as Sean Rafferty in “House of Guinness.”
(Ben Blackall / Netflix)
Apart from the politics, the family squabbles and the not particularly worrying fortunes of the family business — I mean, you can still order a Guinness — the main concerns of this historical melodrama, this stout opera, if you will, are beating hearts and heaving breasts. Skeptically accepting a meeting with Edward in the spirit of detente, Ellen feels electricity sparking between them, and vice versa. (More acceptably, Edward also has eyes for his cousin Adelaide Guinness, played by Ann Skelly, who has none for him.) Ben, meanwhile, is beloved by Lady Christine O’Madden (Jessica Reynolds), who foolishly believes she can reform him. Well, we’ve all seen that story.
But wait, there’s more! In this telling, at least, Arthur is gay, which is a problem for him as a person living in a super-religious country in the late 19th century and as a representative of the family and their eponymous product. If his orientation becomes known, it is suggested, the world will cease drinking his beer, and the family will be forced to subsist on the millions of pounds they have in the bank and whatever they can scrape off the several estates they own around the country. (Whenever contemporary figures are mentioned, screen-filling subtitles translate the sum into its 2025 equivalent, just so you realize how freaking rich these people were. The budget of the series is not sufficient to make that readily apparent.)
Arthur’s “complication,” which is no secret among his nonjudgmental siblings, has made him A) a target for blackmail, and B) a person in immediate need of a wife, especially as he’s about to stand for his late father’s seat in parliament. Enter Aunt Agnes Guinness (Dervla Kirwan), the story’s yenta, and marriage prospect Lady Olivia Hedges (Danielle Galligan), who is quite happy to settle for a maximum of freedom and a modicum of responsibility, and who curses in a most unladylike fashion. (But, really, the F-words and the Sh-words fly everywhere in this show.)
And what about Anne, saddled with a degenerative disease and a less-than-sexy cleric husband? She’ll sublimate her own romantic heartache in urban renewal and other good works. (Factually, the family had a philanthropic bent, and the company was so far ahead of its time in treating its workers well, including pensions beginning in the 1880s — that gets a moment here — and providing medical care to staff and their families, that much of this country still hasn’t caught up. They were less evolved, however, for many years, when it came to hiring Catholics.)
What else? There’s a curious Hobbit of a character named Byron Hedges (Jack Gleeson), an illegitimate cousin who arrives to sell himself as the man to represent their interests in America, into which Edward is keen to expand; we get some scenes set in New York. There’s Potter (Michael McElhatton), the droll, dry butler, who looks askance upon the younger Guinnesses but stays loyal, like butlers do. And Bonnie Champion (David Wilmot), a charismatic crime lord who’s also involved in the company’s export business.
There’s nothing subtle about “House of Guinness,” which makes its points in declarative sentences — sometimes gussied up with Irish-y prose — and gives its characters hardly a moment to relax and enjoy their porter, swelling the soundtrack with aggressive modern Irish rock and rap to make it exciting to the people of 2025. The show can border on the cornball; the characters are the sort you might have seen in the sort of dramas popular in 1868. But the actors inhabit their roles with commitment, so that even the bad company is good company. Good craic, as they say over there.
CRUCIAL evidence used to prosecute Britain’s worst child serial killer Lucy Letby has been ripped apart by experts who claim “grossly misleading” methods were used to secure the nurse’s conviction.
Lucy Letby was handed 15 whole life sentences, meaning she will never be released from prisonCredit: AP
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A new ITV documentary explores the views of a team of international scientists who claim the prosecution case simply doesn’t stand up to scrutinyCredit: MEN Media
She was handed 15 whole life sentences, meaning she will never be released from prison.
Described as a cold-blooded, calculating killer, Letby was said to have used her trusted role on a neonatal intensive care unit to cause catastrophic harm to the most vulnerable newborn babies – without leaving a trace.
A new ITV documentary explores the views of a team of international scientists who claim the prosecution case simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, including crucial statistic evidence and claims over the methods used to kill newborn babies.
Doctors raised suspicions that Lucy Letby had been present at a number of these baby deaths, so she was moved off the unit and into a desk job.
A team from the Royal College of Paediatrics was invited in to investigate. It identified a shortage of nurses and a lack of consultant cover risking patient safety – but could find no definitive reason for the rise in mortality.
However, the unit’s senior doctors were unhappy with the outcome of the reviews and wrote to hospital bosses doubting that the deaths and collapses could be explained by natural causes.
In March 2017 the police were called, and in November 2020 Letby was charged with seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder, relating to 17 babies. She pleaded not guilty.
I was sure Lucy Letby was guilty… then I spent weeks poring over evidence and now I’m convinced no babies were murdered
The prosecution’s case centred on a few central pillars; a shift chart, which showed Letby was always there when something terrible happened, hand-written notes presented as confessions, blood tests suggesting babies had been poisoned, and medical evidence taken from the babies’ notes to support theories that Letby had attacked them.
The person who came up with most of those theories was a retired paediatrician, Dr Dewi Evans.
During the trial there was eight months of prosecution evidence and a series of prosecution witnesses.
But Letby’s legal team presented not a single expert medical witness in her defence.
She was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others.
AS the second anniversary of Lucy Letby’s incarceration approaches, I remain convinced of her innocence.
This investigation by ITV only serves to bolster my opinion.
As the title of the documentary alludes, English justice requires a jury to convict on evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt.
Programme makers have gathered a raft of experts and experienced medics who, in my opinion, ably demonstrate that the Letby prosecution falls well short of that threshold.
I believe it rightly highlights flaws in the statistical evidence put before a jury at her first trial.
A chart showed a cluster of 25 suspicious baby deaths and collapses matched against the shift rota of the 38 nurses who worked on the unit. Only Letby was at the scene for every death and collapse.
Yet, the jury wasn’t told about six other baby deaths in the period for which she faced no charges.
Leading medical statistician Professor Jane Hutton says of the chart in the programme: “This is a summary that is so crude it can only be described as grossly misleading.”
The documentary examines Dr Ravi Jayaram’s assertion that Letby didn’t raise the alarm over a dying baby.
It has since emerged that an email sent by Dr Jayaram to colleagues suggests Letby did actually alert him. It wasn’t shown to juries at either of her trials.
I found convincing an expert on the documentary debunking the prosecution’s assertion that Letby poisoned some of the babies with insulin.
While international expert Dr Shoo Lee – a vocal supporter of Letby’s innocence – insisted that all the babies said to have been killed or injured by the nurse actually died from “natural causes or just bad medical care.”
It mirrors my belief that incompetence not malice was behind the baby’s deaths.
ITV’s documentary will only add to the increasing groundswell of opinion that an innocent woman now languishes behind bars.
As the country started to reflect on the horror of Letby’s crimes, concerns were already being raised about the evidence that was used.
Mark McDonald, Letby’s new barrister, was instructed last September after two failed attempts to appeal her convictions.
He says: “People started contacting me, medically qualified people, scientifically qualified people, statisticians saying ‘we think something has gone wrong here’.”
In the weeks after Letby was convicted, professor of statistics Richard Gill was among a handful of professionals who were questioning the verdict.
He is known to be controversial and outspoken but his work has led to two nurses in Italy and the Netherlands who were convicted of similar crimes having their convictions overturned.
Professor Gill believed the shift chart which helped convict Letby was misleading.
Leading medical statistician Professor Jane Hutton agrees, saying: “It has influenced a lot of people into thinking she must’ve done it because she was always there and nobody else was.
“It has a very strong visual impact but it doesn’t tell you how the data has been selected. You know it is clear that this is aimed to present a conclusion.”
Their main concern was the left hand column of the chart. Each entry presents a death or life-threatening event.
But these were not all the deaths or life-threatening events in that period. The prosecution made a selection.
Dewi Evans’ early reports for the police identified other events which he said were attacks on babies. But these happened when Letby wasn’t on duty and those events don’t appear on the chart.
“This is a summary that is so crude it can only be described as grossly misleading,” says Jane Hutton.
According to the prosecution, Letby used various methods to try to kill. The most simple was by dislodging a baby’s breathing tube.
This is a summary that is so crude it can only be described as grossly misleading
Jane Hutton
Countess of Chester paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram told the court he had never known of the breathing tube of a baby born at 25 weeks to become accidentally dislodged.
But Dr Richard Taylor, a neonatologist with over 30 years experience, and some of his colleagues disagree.
He explains: “The prosecution allege that the tube was intentionally dislodged and the first thing I would say is accidental dislodgement is distinctly common.
“It can be dislodged by the operator and it can also be dislodged by the baby themselves just by moving their head or thrusting their tongue.”
Convictions ‘unsafe’
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As the country started to reflect on the horror of Letby’s crimes, concerns were already being raised about the evidence that was usedCredit: Alamy
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Lucy Letby has a number of high profile supporters including MP David Davis and Dr Shoo LeeCredit: Alamy
The jury couldn’t decide if Letby was guilty of attempting to murder one of the babies, Baby K, by dislodging its breathing tube. That single case went to a retrial and Dr Ravi Jayaram gave evidence.
He told the court he went into the room and saw the baby’s blood oxygen levels dropping dangerously low while Letby stood by and did nothing. He also said Letby had not called for help.
But an email has come to light from Jayaram detailing the event in which he said Letby herself had called him in because the baby was collapsing. The jury was never told about this email.
The documentary claims that Dr Jayaram isn’t the only medic who appears to have contradicted his own testimony. Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering baby C by forcing air into its stomach.
ITV’s documentary will only add to the increasing groundswell of opinion that an innocent woman now languishes behind bars
The Sun’s Oliver Harvey
Dr Dewi Evans based this theory on an X-ray taken on June 12, 2015 which showed air in the baby’s stomach. But Letby had been off work that day and she hadn’t met Baby C when the X-ray was taken.
When challenged on this at trial, Dr Evans couldn’t rule out that air had been injected into the veins, but the prosecution maintained that Letby must have injected air into the baby’s stomach.
Now Dr Evans has committed to another theory. He says Letby killed Baby C a day later by injecting air into the veins, causing something called an air embolism.
Mark McDonald claims the fact that Dr Evans has changed his mind, and was the lead expert for the prosecution, makes all the convictions unsafe.
Mental anguish
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Mark McDonald, Lucy Letby’s barrister, claims the fact that Dr Evans has changed his mind, and was the lead expert for the prosecution, makes all the convictions unsafe
Police investigated Letby for three-and-a-half years before she was charged. During searches of her home, some notes were found which appeared incriminating, with one noting: “I’m evil, I did this.”
In court Letby admitted writing the notes, but said she did so at a time of mental anguish and she was just scribbling down thoughts as a form of therapy.
The hospital had provided a therapist to support Letby during the investigations. Her name appears several times on the notes.
The jury was never told it was this therapist who suggested Letby express her feelings in this way as part of her treatment.
Nearly a year after the police began investigating Letby they made a breakthrough: blood tests which showed high levels of insulin and low c-peptide. The prosecution said this was proof that insulin had been given to the babies externally and was therefore an attempt to poison them.
The prosecution told the jury that two of the babies had been poisoned with insulin and they had test results that proved it.
But a leading forensic scientist says those results cannot be relied on as they will have been done quickly in a medical setting for diagnostic purposes and were not retested to forensic standards.
Over the last six months a team of scientists have been instructed by Letby’s legal team.
They have been given access to the babies’ medical notes and asked to look again at the insulin test results.
Chemical engineer Helen Shannon says: “We have spent hundreds of hours investigating every facet of the science and there is a completely obvious solution that does not involve poisoning.”
We have spent hundreds of hours investigating every facet of the science and there is a completely obvious solution that does not involve poisoning
Helen Shannon
“The insulin case has applied basic clinical guidance for healthy adults to tiny, compromised neonates,” adds Helen.
Many newborn babies are born with proteins in their blood called antibodies. The team says that insulin in the blood stream can stick to these antibodies, giving a higher reading, while c-peptide continues to be cleared, giving a low reading.
Helen says: “It doesn’t have any effect on the child at all, it just floats around. So as a result it gives a very high reading on the test that was done at the time.
“We can’t see any justification at all for the prosecution statement that it can only be poisoning.”
Earlier this year a panel of international medical experts, who reviewed Letby’s case, told a press conference that they did not find any evidence of murder.
Chairman Dr Shoo Lee provided what he said were highly detailed grounds baby-by-baby for concluding that none of the murders occurred.
He added: “We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care.
“Lucy was charged with seven murders and seven attempted murders. In our opinion, the medical opinion, the medical evidence doesn’t support murder in any of these babies.”
‘Deeply distressing’
The expert panel report has been delivered to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and her case can only be returned to the Court of Appeal if there is new evidence.
To reexamine the cause of the babies’ deaths, the expert panel was given access to all the babies’ medical records to compile their report. For Professor Neena Modi those records tell a story of failure by the hospital and the doctors.
She says: “On reading through the detailed medical notes, what was harrowing was seeing a story unfold where possibly things could have been recognised earlier and interventions put in place and possibly for some of the babies the outcomes might not have been what they were. This was deeply distressing.”
The increase in deaths coincided with the unit having to take babies who were more unwell than they were equipped or staffed for, it is claimed.
Professor Modi says: “The babies we are referring to were all extremely vulnerable. Some of them were demonstrably and recognisably on a knife edge.
“Others could have been recognised to be on a knife edge but they were not monitored appropriately or treated appropriately.
“Problems went unrecognised until the point at which a baby deteriorated very abruptly. The babies might not have died had their difficulties been addressed earlier.”
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To reexamine the cause of the babies’ deaths, the expert panel was given access to all the babies’ medical records to compile their report. For Professor Neena Modi those records tell a story of failure by the hospital and the doctorsCredit: Alamy
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Earlier this year a panel of international medical experts, who reviewed Letby’s case, told a press conference that they did not find any evidence of murderCredit: PA
In a statement to ITV, the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Lucy Letby was convicted of 15 separate counts following two jury trials. In May 2024, the Court of Appeal dismissed Letby’s leave to appeal on all grounds rejecting her argument that expert prosecution evidence was flawed.”
They confirmed they are considering a file of evidence from the police relating to further deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “Due to the Thirlwall Inquiry and ongoing police investigations it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”
Dr Dewi Evans told ITV that his evidence was subject to cross examination agreed by a jury after thorough review from a judge and subsequently agreed by the Court of Appeal.
He added: “None of the evidence presented by Shoo Lee’s expert panel has been subject to any such scrutiny and it contains factual errors. It is trial by speculation.”
Dr Ravi Jayaram declined to comment.
Lucy Letby: Beyond all Reasonable Doubt? Is on ITV1 on Sunday 3 August.
In a one-minute video, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr revoked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that healthy children and healthy pregnant women be vaccinated for COVID-19, leaving some experts concerned and others unsure about the policy’s details.
Kennedy was joined in the video, posted on May 27 on X, by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Kennedy, who was tapped by President Donald Trump after a years-long embrace of vaccine conspiracy theories, did not make it clear whether he was referring to a recommendation for children or pregnant women getting vaccinated for the first time, for getting subsequent booster shots, or both. Days after the announcement, HHS’s website provided no clarity, saying, “COVID-19 vaccines are available to everyone 6 months and older. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect people from COVID-19.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage dated January 7 – before Kennedy was secretary – provided a similar broad vaccine endorsement.
Some experts say the low rates of serious COVID-19 cases among children justify tightening the federal vaccine recommendation. Others say that the move will make it harder to get vaccinated and cause preventable serious illnesses.
Kennedy broke from norms by not waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to vote on vaccine guidance at a scheduled June meeting.
Recommending against vaccination for certain groups could make it harder for most children and pregnant women to get the shot, if insurers decide not to cover COVID-19 shots for those groups. Immunization rates are already low, with 13 percent of children and 14.4 percent of pregnant women up to date with the 2024-25 edition of the COVID-19 vaccine, the CDC found in late April.
We fact-checked the three federal health officials’ comments with health experts.
Kennedy said child vaccine boosters lacked clinical data
Kennedy said, “Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”
In recent years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – a group of outside experts that advises the CDC on who should be vaccinated and how often – has recommended annual boosters for healthy children who have already received COVID-19 vaccines.
The committee made this recommendation without also recommending that every annual iteration of the vaccine undergo new rounds of clinical trials before being used, said Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. (The vaccine had been approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy early in the pandemic.) The panel concluded that the coronavirus vaccine operated in the same way as the annual flu vaccine, which has not required repeated clinical trials, said Schaffner, a former committee member and current adviser.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommended COVID-19 vaccinations for children and did not urge new clinical trials.
Kids generally don’t need the vaccination, FDA chief said
Makary said, “There’s no evidence healthy kids need” the vaccine.
This is disputed. Most children will not face serious illness from COVID-19, but a small fraction will. Experts draw different lines when deciding how widespread the vaccination programme needs to be, given this scale of risk.
During the 2024-25 COVID-19 season, children and adolescents age 17 and younger comprised about 4 percent of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations. The relatively small number of serious cases among children has driven the belief among some scientists that the universal vaccination recommendation is too broad.
However, among all children, rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations were highest among infants less than six months old.
“With 4 million new children born every year with no exposure to COVID, young children have rates of disease similar to the disease rates in people older than 65,” Schaffner said, citing a September 2024 article on the CDC’s website.
COVID-19 was among the top 10 causes of death in children during the worst of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, said Tara C Smith, a Kent State University epidemiologist. “Though we may no longer be at that stage … we vaccinate for influenza, so why not continue to do so for COVID?”
Some doctors are concerned about the lingering syndrome known as long COVID, about which less is known, especially among children.
The outside advisory committees and the medical academies found this level of serious disease to be sufficient to recommend continued annual vaccinations.
Makary said this policy is similar to those in other countries
Makary was accurate when he said that “most countries have stopped recommending” routine COVID-19 vaccination for children.
“Many countries will only offer the COVID vaccine to children if they have underlying health conditions or are immunocompromised,” said Brooke Nichols, a Boston University associate professor of global health.
Makary co-wrote a May 20 article that included a list of booster recommendations in Canada, Europe and Australia. It said in most countries, the recommendation was to vaccinate older people or those at high risk.
Most countries have taken this course, Schaffner said, because “by now, 95 percent of us have had experience with COVID, either through the vaccine or through illness or both. And second, the current variants are thought to be much milder than some of the earlier variants.”
The World Health Organization in 2024 recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for children with health risks who had never been vaccinated. For children and adolescents who had previously been vaccinated, it did not routinely recommend revaccination.
The European Medicines Agency recommended the BioNtech Pfizer vaccine for children over the age of five years and said the use of the vaccine for children is effective and safe. Euronews reported that the agency issued its recommendation in November 2021 and later recommended the Moderna vaccine for children ages 12 to 17.
In the United Kingdom, “only older people or those with specific diseases or illnesses making them susceptible to severe COVID were recommended to get boosters, and as a result, uptake in those groups was actually higher than in the US,” where outreach and advertising for the vaccinations focused on children as well as older people, said Babak Javid, an associate professor in the division of experimental medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.
The New York Times found that in Europe “many countries do not recommend the vaccines for healthy children under 5, but the shots are approved for everyone 6 months and older,” meaning that they can be safely used by anyone who’s at least six months old.
Doctors say the vaccine protects pregnant women
Experts disagreed with Kennedy’s recommendation against vaccinating pregnant women, saying the vaccine protects pregnant women and their infants.
Steven J Fleischman, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists president, said, “It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. In fact, growing evidence shows just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority of hospitalised infants less than six months of age – those who are not yet eligible for vaccination – born to unvaccinated mothers.”
After a vaccination, antibodies reach the fetus. The doctors’ group said there is no evidence the vaccine creates adverse effects for either mother or the fetus, although fever or pain at the injection site are possible.
The federal government in May provided conflicting information about the vaccine and pregnancy.
In Makary’s May 20 article, he and his co-author included pregnancy on the CDC’s 2025 list of underlying medical conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
“They literally contradicted themselves over the course of a couple of days,” said Dr Peter Hotez, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development co-director. “It appears RFK Jr reversed his own FDA’s decision.”
Following the May 27 video announcement, Makary told NBC that the decision about vaccination should be between a pregnant woman and her doctor.
A 2024 review of 67 studies found that fully vaccinated pregnant women had a 61 percent lower likelihood of a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy.
What’s next?
In its June meeting, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices might move towards less sweeping recommendations for vaccinating children, closer to those that Kennedy enacted.
“If you listened to the discussions in the most recent previous meeting, they very much seemed to be moving in a more targeted approach,” Schaffner said.
The question of pregnant women may be one where the advisory committees may recommend more flexibility with vaccine usage than what Kennedy’s video statement seems to suggest, Schaffner said.
Other areas where the panels could back greater flexibility could be for otherwise healthy people who serve as caregivers or who live with more vulnerable people who are advanced in age or are immunocompromised.
Life, death, crime, kitsch, nostalgia, immigrant aspirations and witty design — all of these elements converge in the world of motels, which didn’t exist before 1925.
Here are five facts and phenomena from the century of history.
The motel turns 100. Explore the state’s best roadside havens — and the coolest stops along the way.
Where Magic Fingers are found
From the late 1950s into the ’80s, thousands of motels proudly advertised their Magic Fingers — a little collection of vibrating electric nodes under your mattress that would give you a 15-minute “massage” for 25 cents, inspiring creators from Kurt Vonnegut to Frank Zappa. Alas, their moment passed. But not everywhere. Morro Bay’s Sundown Inn, which gets two diamonds from the Auto Club and charges about $70 and up per night, is one of the last motels in the West that still features working Magic Fingers, offered (at the original price) in most of its 17 rooms. “We’ve owned the hotel for 41 years, and the Magic Fingers was here when we started. We just kept them,” said co-owner Ann Lin. Ann’s mother- and father-in-law immigrated from Taiwan and bought the property in 1983.
Motels, hotels and Patels
Many motels and small hotels are longtime family operations. Sometimes it’s the original owner’s family, and quite often it’s a family named Patel with roots in India’s Gujarat state. A recent study by the Asian American Hotel Owners Assn. found that 60% of U.S. hotels — and 61% of those in California — are owned by Asian Americans. By one estimate, people named Patel own 80% to 90% of the motels in small-town America. The beginnings of this trend aren’t certain, but many believe that one of the first Indians to acquire a hotel in the U.S. was Kanjibhai Desai, buyer of the Goldfield Hotel in downtown San Francisco in the early 1940s.
Motels, media and murders
There’s no escaping the motel in American pop culture. Humbert Humbert, the deeply creepy narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel “Lolita,” road-tripped from motel to motel with his under-age victim. Edward Hopper gave us the disquieting 1957 oil painting “Western Motel.” In the film “Psycho” (1960), Alfred Hitchcock brought to life the murderous motel manager Norman Bates. When Frank Zappa made a movie about the squalid misadventures of a rock band on tour, he called it “200 Motels” (1971). When the writers of TV’s “Schitt’s Creek” (2015-2020) wanted to disrupt a rich, cosmopolitan family, they came up with the Rosebud Motel and its blue brick interior walls. And when executives at A&E went looking for a true-crime series in 2024, they came up with “Murder at the Motel,” which covered a killing at a different motel in every episode.
The Lorraine Motel, before and after
The 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made the Lorraine Motel in Memphis globally notorious. But before and after that day, the Lorraine played a very different role. Built as a small hotel in 1925 and segregated in its early years, the property sold to Black businessman Walter Bailey in 1945. He expanded it to become a motel, attracting many prominent African American guests. In the 1950s and ’60s, the Lorraine was known for housing guests such as Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Roy Campanella, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Aretha Franklin, Lionel Hampton, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and the Staples Singers. After King’s assassination, the motel struggled, closed, then reemerged in 1991 as the National Civil Rights Museum, now widely praised. Guests follow civil rights history through the building, ending at Room 306 and its balcony where King was standing when he was shot.
The man upstairs in the Manor House
In 1980, a Colorado motel owner named Gerald Foos confided to journalist Gay Talese that he had installed fake ceiling vents in the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colo., and for years had been peeping from the attic at guests in bed. The man had started this in the 1960s and continued into the ’90s. Finally, in 2016, Talese spun the story into a New Yorker article and a book, “The Voyeur’s Motel,” sparking many charges that he had violated journalistic ethics.
