It's been more than 20 years since Susannah and Stuart Macpherson opened the doors of this beautiful Georgian building to guests, but readers assure us that everything 'continues to be excellent', with 'good food and wine', and a friendly, warm welcome.

The comforts of a traditional country house combine with Relais & Châteaux luxury at this gracious Victorian home-from-home with fine-dining restaurant and views to Marlee Loch and the Sidlaw hills.

The feel of a Victorian country house in town prevails in Struan and Louise Lothian's friendly, well-run hotel with great food on the leafy edge of Pitlochry, with views to the Perthshire hills.

'Our favourite hotel in the whole wide world,' writes a devotee of this seafront grande dame, run by the same family for 104 years.

Beautiful rooms and suites, first-rate food and a convivial atmosphere prevail at this hotel and local drop-in occupying a converted Georgian pub and adjacent townhouse.

An Edwardian homage to 17th-century style, this beautiful manor house with rich Jacobean-inspired interiors is run as a luxury hotel with fine-dining restaurant where you can enjoy a 'truly memorable meal'.

Offering 'beautiful accommodation in a quiet, restful setting', this rustic-chic B&B is tucked away down a farm track just three miles from the city centre.

Part of the nascent and fast-growing Signet Collection, this hotel, has an easy-going vibe, smart bedrooms, some very affordable, some with views over Rutland Water, relaxed brasserie dining and, now, an outdoor spa.

A Regency beauty with spectacular views from the balconies, this stylish, dog-friendly country house hotel has a relaxed vibe, beautifully designed bedrooms, and a fine-dining restaurant.

With its own farm shop, brewery and spa barn with outdoor hot tub and sauna as well as a kiddies' playground, this 'buzzy boozer' is 'so much more than a pub with rooms', writes our inspector.

This quintessential English country house with spa, pools, kids' club, elegant bedrooms and fun tree houses, hits all the right luxurious notes for a romantic or family stay.

Lakeland luxury at its finest comes courtesy of Gilpin, with its Michelin-starred dining, private hot tubs in the majority of its indulgent rooms and attentive staff. Its flagship rooms are extravagantly large glass-cube spa suites that extend over a pond and offer private garden, spa room and circular bath.

Banish images of fast-food outlets and slot machines when you break your journey at Tebay on wild and woolly Shap Fell, 60 miles from the Scottish border.

Agatha Christie memorabilia, murder-mystery weekends and Art Deco touches set the tone at Hugh and Emma Asher's creeper-clad hotel, former home of the author's doctor friends, in a bustling market town.

With the sea to the fore and Tennyson Down rising up behind, this newly refurbished hotel has spectacular views and scarcely less impressive cooking in the revamped restaurant.

Olga Polizzi's beautifully styled Georgian fishing lodge, built for the Duke of Bedford and scandalous Duchess Georgiana, stands in a picturesque designed landscape with the River Tamar running through.

Behind the solid exterior of an Edwardian park-side villa lies a Scandi-chic boutique hotel and popular drop-in restaurant.

Enjoying an ideal location opposite Clifton Down, this twin-bayed Georgian merchant's house B&B sits atop one of Bristol's highest hills, with panoramic views.

The fun begins in the sculpture-studded subtropical garden at this dog-friendly clifftop hotel, and runs through everything, from the ambience to the decor.

Occupying a Georgian house and new annexe wings with private shorefront on Ullswater, this is an entirely child-friendly, dog-friendly 'lifestyle' hotel for those who love the great outdoors.

At the heart of the South Downs National Park, this village pub with rooms is the rural sister of the seaside Crab & Lobster, Sidlesham (see entry). It is country but no bumpkin.

Bohemian Brighton is artfully encapsulated in this Regency townhouse with its cool vibe, quirky furnishings and neighbourhood café-bar.

In a hamlet just 25 minutes from Bath, 'the Carps' is a 'very nice country pub' offering 'very good' food, and oodles of atmosphere in the stone-walled, beamed bar, with fire and log-burner.

Modern mixes with medieval on the ramparts of what remains of Nottingham Castle, with this sleek hotel the perfect place to escape the bustling city.

Anne Boleyn's childhood home, reimagined by William Waldorf Astor as a fairytale moated castle, the seat of a Tudor courtier, stands in landscaped grounds with an Edwardian 'Tudor' village, home to this exceptional B&B.

With smartly refurbished interiors and imaginative, locally sourced, restaurant-quality food, this dog-friendly country inn on the Lowther Estate is a happy mix of pub informality and country-house comforts.

This Victorian gothic mansion might appear a little forbidding, but step inside and you are overwhelmed by a warm ambience and beautiful interiors, while some guests choose to sleep out in the woods in a timber-lined 'hive' or tree house.

Rescued from closure by two local couples, this gastropub at the heart of a picturesque village, has stylish bedrooms and cooking of a very high order.

You can imagine nodding off in an armchair over the latest issue of Samuel Johnson's Idler, or William Hazlitt's polemics in the Tatler, when you step into this time-warp hotel and close the door on trendy Soho. It was here, on a Georgian terrace in the 1820s, that essayist Hazlitt penned his valediction, and antiques and furnishings keep faith with a bygone age.