The sweep of honey-stone buildings that form Bath’s Georgian crescent is home to two majestic mansions which combine as one hotel, beyond which lie a leafy garden and atmospheric spa.

In Hardy’s ‘Emminster’, ten minutes from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, a historic priest’s house is now a restaurant-led hotel.

You have to island-hop to reach this New England-style hotel on the rugged Atlantic west side of the smallest of the inhabited Isles of Scilly, but once there, the sense of escape is blissful.

Guests can eat and drink alfresco at the Hine family’s hotel, a Queen Anne-style mansion overlooking a willow-draped duck pond in a rural hamlet.

‘It felt like staying with friends, albeit very hip ones,’ says a Guide insider, of the Milsom family’s hotel outside Colchester, in a ‘wonderful setting’ where windows frame views of Constable’s Dedham Vale.

‘Down country lanes and a mile-long private drive’, this Elizabethan manor house is the Miss Piggy among Robin Hutson’s quirky country house hotels (see index). Like that porcine diva, it embodies fabulosity with a dash of irresistibility and a great, big dollop of attitude.

A man for all seasons, Raymond Blanc has created something beautiful at this 15th-century manor house where he has held two Michelin stars since 1984.

With its belvedere and striking iron-lace balcony, this hotel is a distinctive presence on the quay of a port town on the Stour and Orwell estuaries.

‘The place breathes class,’ says a Guide inspector of Jake Dinsdale’s Jacobean-style country house, set high in the Yorkshire Dales on the Pennine Way.

‘Set in rolling hills, 15 minutes from Bath, Homewood is a lovely hotel,’ our inspector writes of this country house extravaganza.

In a medieval wool town of wonky timber-frame houses this French-style ‘restaurant and bedrooms’ hides its 14th-century origins behind a Georgian facade.

The words Padstow and Rick Stein go together like fish and chips, and his flagship restaurant offers stylish rooms so you can totter up to bed after your fill of the sea.

On the banks of the River Hodder in the Forest of Bowland, this 'cheerful, doggy' inn is chock-full of tradition, with stone-flagged floors, open fires, oak furniture and walls bedecked with paintings and hunting cartoons.

This homely, family-friendly hotel, just outside Abersoch, with glorious views of Cardigan Bay, continues to get things right year after year, which is why its loyal guests keep on returning.

There are sublime views from this eccentric Victorian country house with Italianate campaniles and 20th-century porte cochère, in wooded grounds overlooking the River Usk.

'Spectacular views' across Loch Linnhe to the Morvern mountains are available from some of the rooms, from the fine-dining restaurant (Relais & Châteaux), and from the waterside gardens just across the road from this former ferry inn.

George the peacock struts some of the 40-acre grounds of this rural Regency-style country house, run as a hotel for more than four decades by the Bowe family (Relais & Châteaux).

Second-generation owners Mark and Mary Wheeler continue a 60-year tradition of welcoming guests to their Georgian-cum-Victorian house in landscaped grounds and gardens, with a sandy beach on Lough Swilly.

Once you have navigated the joys of this ‘rambling building’ in honey Cotswold stone, with its ‘superb spa’, cinema and choice of dining, there are the 26 different ‘rooms’ in the ‘beautiful, well-tended gardens’ to explore.

Flower-bedecked without, warm and buzzy within, this pub-with-rooms in a Chew valley hamlet occupies three old, knocked-through miners’ cottages.

The apricot-coloured Georgian house, at the end of a lime-tree avenue, adds just a touch of eccentricity to a traditional country house stay.

‘The location is stunning, the views as the sun sets truly magical’ from this family-run, cliff-top hotel and spa, with acres of Scandi-style relaxation space, squashy sofas, and plenty of things to do, from relaxing in a spa pool to surfing at the beach.

This Cotswold stone country house hotel, now under the ownership of Fuller’s, retains both its charm and its hare motifs, which crop up everywhere, from pillowcases to prints.

In a beautiful setting in the Peak District, this historic country house offers a homely atmosphere and excellent value for money, which draw guests back year after year.

‘Neatness and sweetness all around, These at Prestonfield are found’, wrote Benjamin Franklin, after a stay at this 17th-century mansion in parkland under Arthur’s Seat. ‘This hotel was wonderful,’ a trusted reader waxes no less lyrical.

The Teff brook runs by this 17th-century limestone small hotel and former dower house in a Nadder valley village, with views of green fields and gardens.

A seaside hotel with serious style, Olga Polizzi’s glowing white collection of cottages and former yacht clubhouse cascading down the hillside is a cross between New England and Mediterranean Riviera.

A Norfolk icon, this19th-century windmill, rising from reed beds by the River Glaven, has wonderfully characterful guest rooms in the tower and converted outbuildings.

By a bubbling burn in the Cairngorms national park, Joe and Sarah Jouhal have recently taken over this former Victorian tweed mill which attracts high praise for David Skiggs’ nightly three-course and six course tasting menus.

‘When you hear that this revamped 16th-century pub on the Castle Ashby Estate is owned by Lord and Lady Northampton, you expect it to be posh with a capital P,’ writes a Guide insider – but happily no!

In a ‘very beautiful spot’ on the remote, rocky shores of Loch Glendhu, an old coaching inn has been transformed into a modern hotel that takes full advantage of the beauty and bounty of its setting.

Come for a whodunnit night at Emma and Hugh Asher’s ivy-smothered hotel, ‘well placed for touring North Norfolk’, and murder by chocolate could be on the menu.

This ticks all the boxes for a village inn: overlooking the green, large beer garden, beams and flagstones, armchairs by the fire, country-chic bedrooms, and modern classics on the menu.

‘Beautiful views of the bay’, ‘outstanding staff’ and lovely sub-tropical gardens see guests returning to book their favourite room year after year at this ‘wonderful hotel’ whose afternoon teas were once enjoyed by Queen Victoria.

Devotees of this thatched village pub-with-rooms with its Michelin-starred cooking and quirky style will be thrilled when it fully re-opens in autumn following 2021’s disastrous fire; rooms and breakfast, meanwhile, are unaffected.

Brothers Charles and Edmund Inkin keep a welcome in the vales at their relaxed, brick-red dining pub-with-rooms, amid sheep-grazed pastures, just outside the Brecon Beacons national park.

The River Monnow flows just in front of the door of Sarah Hudson’s former coaching inn and well-liked pub-with-rooms.

There is a warm-hearted sense of fun about Jeannette and Anthony Goodrich’s ‘very welcoming’ child-friendly, dog-friendly, rose-covered 14th-century pub.

With its light footprint, floor-to-ceiling windows and stainless steel roof, this sustainably built hotel on the castle ramparts chimes with Nottingham’s ambition to be the UK’s first carbon-neutral city.

Nick and Charlotte Dent have had a field day converting a Georgian stone farmhouse and outbuildings in 11 acres into a dog-friendly, fun hotel brimming with character and ‘so many appealing, endlessly inventive features’.