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

Along a narrow lane, a lamb-chop toss from Smithfield market, Clerkenwell’s hubbub surrenders to the ‘club-like’ calm of Peter McKay and Douglas Blain’s tumble of 18th-century houses.

A Gallic oasis created by four Parisians (Experimental Group), this small hotel occupies a couple of red-brick Victorian town houses with a literary past, off busy Covent Garden Piazza.

Georgian ‘Grand Taste’ and sybaritic comforts are the trademarks of Peter McKay and Douglas Blain’s eccentric hotel in gentrified Spitalfields.

A royal warrant and a Michelin star are but two accolades held by London’s last grand Edwardian hotel, still run by the family that built it.

It may have put its years of rock’n’roll excess behind it, but this hotel on ‘an elegant street in Notting Hill’ has lost none of its eclectic charm.

A theatrical verve and ‘exceptionally nice staff’ at this Clerkenwell Georgian town house have visitors ‘raving about it’.

This delightful ‘dotty’ hotel was once home to that Victorian purveyor of nonsense verse Edward Lear.

A hop, skip and jump from Soho and the West End theatres, the zesty embrace of art and colour characterise this hotel as one of Tim and Kit Kemp's Firmdale group.

A quiet country house atmosphere lingers at this plush former diplomats’ club close to Green Park.

As trendsetters move ever eastwards, this Edwardian former town hall in Bethnal Green is increasingly in the thick of it.

Front-facing rooms peep into the royal mews from the fifth floor of this historic building, overlooking Buckingham Palace.

A continental air drifts through this well-located neoclassical hotel (part of the French chain), off Pall Mall.