Far from the hurrying world, this former coaching Iinn stands amid Wordsworth’s northern Lakes.

‘Behind the dramatic facade lies a beautiful garden,’ writes a reader in praise of this hotel and spa with its green oasis at the centre of a divine Georgian crescent.

In ‘lovely Cotswold stone buildings around a pretty courtyard’, this mostly 16th-century former coaching inn has had a stylish make-over.

‘We have become addicted to this place,’ write trusted readers, following a return visit to this beautiful Elizabethan manor house (Relais & Châteaux).

'In its glory, in the very beautiful Otter valley', this Elizabethan manor house is the fifth member of Robin Hutson’s Pig family.

‘Exquisitely refurbished.’ Peter McKay and Douglas Blain have cultivated ‘an oasis of civilisation’ within a decadent cluster of Soho’s Georgian houses.

‘Wow! This was good.’ A regular Guide reader offered high praise after visiting Paul and Fiona Robinson’s ‘delightful’ hotel that gazes across Gerrans Bay on the Roseland peninsula.

‘Definitely one to go back to.’ This ‘super hotel’, housed in a 16th-century priory on the River Frome, continues to gather fans.

‘A lovely place to stay,’ writes a reader in 2018, of this popular old inn. On the banks of the River Hodder, it has views to the Forest of Bowland.

In the lea of the cliffs, overlooking a private beach on the rugged Galloway coast, Sian and David Ibbotson’s Victorian hunting lodge offers a great sense of escape.

On the Wild Atlantic Way, with views across the ‘dramatic’ Burren Hills to Galway Bay, ‘delightful’ Gregans Castle is ‘the epitome of understated country-house hotel luxury,’ writes a Guide regular this year.

A beautiful formal garden greets visitors to the O’Haras’ otherwise laid-back and informal Georgian mansion.

‘Remains a flagship in its idiom,’ writes a trusted reader, of this legendary enterprise, centred on a wisteria-draped Georgian house grafted on to the remains of a Norman castle.

It’s worth driving the long road to Scarista House, with its ‘well-deserved reputation for excellent feasting’ and ‘one of Britain’s most extraordinary locations’.

Readers ‘had a really lovely, relaxing stay’ at Lila Arora’s apricot-washed Georgian mansion, approached by an avenue of lime trees amid sheep-grazed pastures.

A ‘lovely drive over moors’ leads to this hotel in a North Pennines village built from the stone of a dissolved 12th-century abbey.

A consortium headed by Office Space in Town has just acquired hotel space in Devon. This gleaming white Art Deco hotel on a tidal island, sold by its former owners after 17 years, is undergoing a multi-million-pound make-over,

Thatched cottages and sheep-dotted fields swaddle the single-track roads to this 17th-century mellow-stone Nadder valley house in an ‘unspoilt’ village.

A mildly bohemian air filters through the Green family’s wisteria-hung Georgian country house hotel, bordered by bluebell woods.

Up 137 steps, through ‘glorious’ gardens, ‘one of the most comfortable establishments I’ve ever stayed in’ occupies a higgle piggle of houses with ‘extraordinary views’ across Falmouth Bay.

‘They just keep making it better every year,’ writes a trusted correspondent, of this luxurious country house hotel in Lakeland countryside.

On a tranquil side street in a picture-postcard market town on the River Windrush, this higgledy-piggledy old inn pleased Guide inspectors with its ‘classic Cotswold ambience’.

Tim and Anne Riley’s small hotel stands serenely on a steep hillside on the edge of a village where the Exmoor National Park meets the sea.

‘Tranquil air of relaxed calm’, ‘Good for the soul’, ‘An oasis of peace’. We hear perennial praise for John Edward Joyce’s country house hotel.