Named after former resident and essayist William Hazlitt, this ‘stunningly individual’ hotel, owned by Peter McKay and Douglas Blain, is a sensuous escape from Soho directly outside.

There may now be USB charge sockets in all bedrooms, but this hotel retains such an air of a bygone age that you half expect Dr Johnson to swing by from his house a stroll away.

A design-led boutique hotel with impressive green credentials (it pumps water from its own 1,500-foot borehole), this former Victorian warehouse embodies the renaissance of East London.

Across from the pocket park of Orange Square, with its statue of a young Mozart, this ‘upmarket pub/café/restaurant’ is a sister to the Grazing Goat (see entry).

In ‘a great location’ in vibrant ‘Portman Village’, tucked away behind Oxford Street, this ‘all-day café/bar/restaurant-with-rooms’ has a relaxed vibe.

Wit and whim go hand in hand at Mark Sainsbury and Michael Benyan’s ‘brilliantly quirky’ Georgian town house in a cobbled corner of Clerkenwell.

Forget starving in a garret. Artists need their creature comforts like the rest of us, and find them at Charlotte and Justin Salisbury’s hip hotels (see also Brighton, South Leigh).

Choose Lear’s Loft bedroom at this Georgian town house and you can dance to the light of the moon on a roof terrace with alfresco copper bath, then phone down for mince and slices of quince and a runcible spoon.

Visitors can live like a local at this eclectic Victorian house in chic yet quirky Notting Hill.

Novelists, politicians, silk merchants as well as the petty thieves, tarts and vagabonds of the area are commemorated in this eccentric hotel in gentrified Spitalfields.

In a former grammar school for boys near Tower Bridge, Victorian grandeur has been overlaid with Indian opulence to make a classy hotel.

‘On arrival we discovered that our package included afternoon tea, which we enjoyed before a concert at Cadogan Hall.’

‘I have stayed at this lovely hotel for many years, and it still pleases in every respect,' writes a reader in 2019, of this cherished London institution, contrived from four knocked-through Georgian town houses.

The show-stopper at this small hotel is Sharon Marston’s April Light, an 18-metre cascade of polished steel, polymer and glass fibre optics, which hangs in the central stairwell, scattering colours and light.

It’s not alone in claiming to be ‘London’s first boutique hotel’, but the ‘charming, quirky’ Portobello is assuredly one of its most extraordinary.

‘No bland corporate anonymity here.’ Beyond the portico of a white stucco Victorian mansion lies a truly boutique hotel, part of Kit and Tim Kemp’s Firmdale group.

Osbert Lancaster dubbed the style ‘Pont Street Dutch’, but behind the gabled red brick facade of twin Victorian mansions, you are in Italy.

A busy, multi-tasking pub, 'school-run coffees in the morning, great food and pub atmosphere at night'.

‘Simple, ideally located and representing good value’, this small hotel with a pretty, plant-decked Georgian exterior is ‘remarkably quiet’ considering its prime position in bustling Covent Garden.

All is serene at this handsome 1860s town house hotel (Firmdale group) just minutes from Hyde Park.

A calm oasis in buzzy surroundings, Kit Kemp’s signature modern English style surges through this swanky West End hotel.

Discreetly tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the West End, a calm town house hotel with an intriguing history.

Just north of Soho and the West End theatres, the zesty embrace of art and colour confirms this hotel as one in Tim and Kit Kemp’s Firmdale group.

Sculptor Fernando Botero’s ten-foot-high bronze cat cheekily pokes its tongue out at guests in the lobby of this creatively designed hotel.