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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In a quiet spot, this Mayfair hotel (part of the Althoff collection) in a former diplomats’ club has a secret shortcut on to Green Park.

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

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