Samanta under the dome at Ten Trinity Square

Composure is Samanta's signature. She crosses a grand lobby without hurrying, looks at the architecture before she looks at the room, and takes her seat as though it had been waiting for her. Slim and 174 cm, she has a steady brown gaze and dark brown hair that falls long down her back. Her style is sleek noir: a black column dress, a satin coat, a single silver ring, perhaps a dark lip. The effect is cinematic without a trace of costume.

Elegant and composed, with a magnetism that grows the longer you sit with her, Samanta is ideal for a dinner where the setting matters. Her English is fluent and precise. She has played violin for years and still plays for herself most evenings. She is learning another language at the moment, slowly and with great discipline, and she collects design hotels, reviewing each in a private notebook by its lighting, its staircase and the weight of its door handles.

Near Tower Bridge her choice is Ten Trinity Square, the former Port of London Authority headquarters on Tower Hill, now the Four Seasons, where the bar sits beneath a great domed rotunda. She orders a very cold martini and talks about the building's history as though describing an old friend. Dinner follows close by, and afterwards the walk down to the river brings the lit towers of the bridge into view, one of the few sights in London she still stops for.

Samanta lives in Mayfair, around twenty-five minutes away, and prefers dinner plans settled by 3pm on the day. Tower Hill sits in Zone 1, so travel is included. Browse Tower Bridge for hotels nearby, check rates, and send your plan to booking.