The cheat's Nobel Prize

By Simon Heptinstall, Daily Mail

Last updated at 11:19 15 October 2003

Einstein was a Nobel laureate

There are two ways to experience the grandeur, luxury and accolade of a Nobel prize ceremony.

The first, like Anthony Leggett and Peter Mansfield, the British winners announced last week, is to dedicate your life to science and to excellence.

The other way is to visit the Swedish capital for a nice weekend and cheat a bit. My easy route to a Nobel medallion starts at Stockholm's Grand Hotel.

This elegant waterfront hotel is as much a part of the world's most prestigious prize as the lengthy dinner with the Swedish royal family and the cheque for £775,000. The awards used to be presented in the Grand's Hall of Mirrors, and the hotel restaurant hosted the glittering post-awards dinner until 1930. Even now, all the Nobel winners stay at the Grand. Literature laureates - such as Churchill, Hemingway and Solzhenitsyn - are given the Nobel suite.

But for the rest of the year, it's available to anyone - for £870 a night. This magnificent, four-room penthouse would make anyone feel special, no matter how few A-levels they've got. I imagine this year's literature winner, South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, will be anxiously pacing around the glass coffee table in the lounge, practising his acceptance speech - as the last British winner, V. S. Naipaul, probably did two years ago. And you can't help lying in the huge bed thinking about previous winners: Kipling, Golding, Galsworthy and George Bernard Shaw. I went to the Nobel Museum to find out more. It's a short walk across a bridge through the cobbled streets to Gamla Stan, Stockholm's pretty old town.

The museum, in the city's former stock exchange, explains (in English) how the prizes have been awarded since 1901 by panels of experts as decreed in the will of Alfred Nobel, the multi-millionaire inventor of dynamite. Winners should 'have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind', he said.

The Nobel Foundation clearly hasn't used up all his cash because they've mounted a stylish, educational and entertaining display on what might have been a very dry subject.

The museum is dominated by an overhead conveyor belt dangling portraits and there are continuous showings of films about the winners. The museum makes the point that Nobel prizes are an unashamed piece of good news. It's a rare chance for us to look at ourselves and say: 'Haven't we done well!' Great figures such as Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Alexander Fleming, Lech Walesa, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa are included on the daunting list of Nobel Laureates. Back in the antique-filled Grand, the lofty, intellectual atmosphere continues in public rooms that are more like visiting a stately home than a city centre hotel.

Little wonder that this 125-year-old institution has been declared a Swedish national monument. After you've awarded yourself your own version of a Nobel prize, it's time to enjoy the rest of Stockholm. The historic city's compact centre and romantic waterways make it a perfect choice for an autumn escape. Shopping, sightseeing and simply strolling seem so much more romantic because the city stands on dozens of islands linked by a network of bridges and ferries. The two best things to see are the Skansen open-air folk museum and funfair, and the stunning Vasa Museum, which contains the flagship of the Swedish navy raised intact from the bottom of Stockholm harbour where she sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. Even if you can't afford the rooms at the Grand, pop in for the smorgasbord in the Veranda Restaurant overlooking the Royal Palace - at £25 a head, it offers dozens of ways to eat herring. A short walk away, along more picturesque alleys, waterways and bridges, I completed my Nobel education at the venue for December's prize-giving dinner.

The dour City Hall is worth a quick look inside for its bizarre architectural touches, such as a ceiling modelled on an upturned Viking longboat in the council chamber and corridors featuring carved gargoyles of the builders. The formal royal banquet in the Blue Room is the pinnacle of Nobel pomp, with a thousand diners eating a gourmet feast, making toasts, having processions and enduring trumpet fanfares.

For the rest of the year, a restaurant in the cellar, Stadhus Kallaren, allows diners to re-enact this occasion. You can choose any Nobel dinner menu from the past 102 years and even use the special gold-rimmed Nobel crockery and cutlery. I ate the three-course dinner from the year 2000, which cost a monstrous £107, although it did include the same champagne, wines, coffee and even designer water as the winners enjoyed that year. It's potty, pricey but popular. My numbered souvenir menu showed I was the 6,599th person to sample that menu. The most popular Nobel menu is from 1994. That year's veal with sage has since been eaten more than 24,000 times, mainly by visiting Japanese fans of their literature prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe. To round off the mock ceremony, the waiter brought to my surprise, a Nobel medal on a plate. My thanks were a little over-effusive. The waiter shuffled away, looking more than a little embarrassed. Only when he'd gone did I examine the award - and realise my 'gold' Nobel medallion was simply chocolate covered in gold foil.

Travel facts Swedish Travel and Tourism Council: 00 800 3080 3080 (freephone); 020-78705600; send an e-mail; www.visit-sweden.com.

Ryanair flies from London and Glasgow to Stockholm several times a day from £40 return. www.ryanair.com, tel: 08712 460000.

If you book before Monday, October 20, flights are free, you just pay the tax - London £13.01 each way, Glasgow £11.01 each way.

The Grand Hotel in Stockholm: 0046 8 679 3500; send an e-mail; www.grandhotel.se. Double rooms from £268 a night. Nobel package is two nights B&B in a superior double, tickets to the Nobel Museum and a Nobel book, for £295 per person. Stadhus Kallaren restaurant, Stockholm City Hall: 0046 8 650 5454. Nobel Museum, Sturegatan, Stockholm 0046 8 232506; www.nobel.se.