Marrakech excess - finding luxury in Morocco

I am 1,500 miles from home, and yet I am feeling highly patriotic. I am lying in the crisp white embrace of a hotel bed and on the wall behind me is written 'Winston Churchill' in huge Arabic letters. Probably 'Sir Winston Churchill', since this is Morocco, land of honorifics. In the newspaper they routinely put 'may God help him' in front of King Mohammed VI's name - and not just since the Arab Spring threatened to spread this way on 20 February. The peaceful demonstrations resulted in the King making an extraordinary, deeply appreciated announcement on television, a little like our Queen did after Princess Diana died, and his pledge to continue constitutional reforms cleared the air, but damage to tourism was already done. It's a good time to sail into a usually booked-out suite in a legendary hotel like La Mamounia, and there is no better suite for a Brit than the Churchill.

He called Marrakech 'the Paris of the Sahara' and once took over a whole floor at La Mamounia. In the suite named for him, there is a beautiful zellige mosaic shower in which to practise your victory speech, and a scented walk-in wardrobe in which to store your panamas and paintbrushes. There is a maquette of Churchill's Parliament Square statue, placed on a crushed red velvet plinth, so you have something to hang your tie on - I mean, salute in the morning. There is also a 34-volume edition of his Complete Works, bound in white vellum. It gave me great pleasure to recline on my daybed eating crystallised orange peel, gazing at the distant Atlas Mountains and reading This Sceptred Isle. Pleasingly, cigar-smoking is permitted in the Churchill suite - the indoor smoking ban has not yet hit Morocco, hence lots of prune-faced French couples lighting up at the dinner table.

It is a deeply stylish hotel, all opulent Art Deco Orientalism, and you must dress the part or be upstaged by white-gloved doormen wearing red velvet capes, and bellboys in plus-fours. La Mamounia's sultry signature fragrance permeates everywhere, like mood music for the nose. The 2009 renovation by Jacques Garcia is a triumph, bringing out forgotten features such as a marvellous green-gold ceiling, hidden under 1980s stucco for years, but painted in 1947 by Jacques Majorelle, he of the famous cobalt blue- painted jardins, a short taxi ride away. The gardens (the entrance fee is about £3) are worth visiting late or early to avoid the crowds and to see a subtle play of light. Where Yves Saint Laurent's ashes were scattered in 2008, there is now a touching monument - a broken column.

Moroccan horticultural design excels at concealing and revealing, and tucked away in the 17-acre garden at La Mamounia is a magical Moroccan restaurant run by 16 female chefs who each specialise in a single dish - my compliments to 'Mrs Pastilla de Homard' (imagine a huge Eccles cake containing spicy almonds, peppers and lobster). In the French restaurant run by two-Michelin-starred chef Jean-Pierre Vigato, even a plate of buttered vegetables was miraculously tasty - they had all been grown in the hotel garden.

Outside this Eden, on the main drag of Djemaa el Fna, so close but a world away, I saw hawkers hurrying out of a sudden unseasonal downpour, the snake charmers rushing to put their poor little vipers away. The minaret of the 12th-century Koutoubia mosque is still, by regulation, the tallest building in town, and most men wear flowing djellabas - inspiring Jean Paul Gaultier, whose S/S 2011 menswear show was themed 'hammam' - an imaginative take on local style, as the men I saw stoking the ladies' hammam furnace with cedarwood shavings were certainly not wearing leather shorts. JPG, Alain Delon and Bernard-Henri Lévy all have homes in the Sidi Mimoun district. 'Ever since 2001, it's been riad fever,' Khalid Amor, our highly educated tour guide, told us. He equivocated when I asked if he joined the 20 February pro-democracy protesters. 'At that time I was in the Atlas Mountains.' A taxi driver was more forthright: 'Am I loyal to the King? I have to be!'

Change is happening, though. Marrakech has its first female mayor, Fatima Zahra Mansouri, a 33-year-old lawyer, and King Mohammed VI has many 'near-term' goals in women's education, health reform, resolution of the Western Sahara issue and so on. More decadently (although there is a tradition of state-owned luxury hotels here - La Mamounia is co-owned by the city of Marrakech, a public bank and a railway), the King has also built a new world-class hotel in Marrakech: the Royal Mansour.

Its luxury makes you feel like a grand vizier. You wander through enchanting courtyards (staff use underground tunnels so as not to disrupt the tranquillity) to your own private three-storey riad. Peep through the wooden moucharabieh fretwork of the dressing room to watch your loved one changing, or bask on your roof terrace complete with plunge pool, open fire and Bedouin tent. The traditional Moroccan artisanal work is effortlessly chic - the gaudy hotels of Dubai simply can't compete.

The Royal Mansour is like a vision from The Arabian Nights. Two lovebirds live in the lobby, inside their own curtained palace of a cage. A library with a retractable roof and a telescope turns into an observatory at the touch of a button. The cocktail list coyly includes 'S** on the Beach'. Waiters deliver every three-Michelin-starred meal with gracious choreography and suggest whether your palate is best served by eating across the plate left to right, or right to left. The strangest thing about the experience? There were barely any guests. Go quickly, before it's booked up forever.

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Abercrombie & Kent offers a four-night trip to Morocco, with two nights at La Mamounia and two at Royal Mansour including flights with Royal Air Maroc and transfers, from £2,435pp, B&B, for two sharing (0845 618 2213; abercrombiekent.co.uk)