Cranes, container ships, Holland-bound ferries . . . The views from this quayside Victorian hotel with its striking iron-lace balcony overlooking the Stour and Orwell estuaries, are ocean-going, stirring, never dull.

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.

'Very quiet and peaceful' on the shores of Loch Sunart, this family-friendly and dog-friendly country house has an 'exceptional location'.

Hip eateries and bars have supplanted hovels and bawdy houses in this once-notorious area, but behind the 18th-century facade of three shop-houses Georgian London lives on.

A sleek, modern hotel on the ramparts of what remains of medieval Nottingham Castle, Hart’s is where your home is when you want to escape the bustling city.

Indulge in a Pornstar Martini in the sea-facing cocktail bar at this stuccoed, bow-fronted Georgian seafront hotel, for this is Brighton, after all – hip, tolerant and fun.

You can relax on a terrace beside the River Stour to the sound of lapping waves and popping corks at this streamlined, nautical-themed luxury hotel, spa and popular wedding venue.

It feels a bit like finding platform 9¾ but trust us: buzz an intercom to enter a grand, buff-stone railway office block by Glasgow Central, ride the lift to the penthouse and step into a cool city hotel.

Thomas Hardy fans will be in their element at this local watering hole in Dorset, which was the model for 'The Sow and Acorn’ in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

High above the town, a modern hotel with ‘exceptional’ seascapes, as restorative, perhaps, as the calm that washes over guests in the award-winning spa.

By a stone arched bridge, this ‘imposing edifice’ is in an idyllic waterside spot, surrounded by gardens that sweep down to the River Leven.

'Traditional with a capital T’, The Goring epitomises grand Edwardian luxury from its silk-lined walls and liveried footmen to its brass-trimmed lift and secret garden.

Amid 240 acres of native woodland, rewilded organic meadow and grassland, this 16th-century stone manor house offers a real escape to the country.

A cream tea (jam first, the Cornish way) on the waterside terrace of this Edwardian hotel in a fishing village on the Fal estuary is a perfect way to enjoy fine weather.

'The setting is stunning – the landscape truly breath-taking,’ wrote readers on a Munro-climbing jaunt to this remote, baronial-style hunting lodge on a wooded estate at the head of Loch Torridon.

More than 70 years after the O’Brien family first opened their Edwardian country house to the Cowdray Park set, third-generation owner Seamus O’Brien presides over a thriving spa hotel.

A ’striking and beautiful’ building – two Georgian villas knocked into one by a Victorian owner – is home to a ‘well-run, friendly, comfortable hotel’, its garden bordered by the moat of the long-gone castle.

With its flamboyant architecture, gardens and views over a wooded valley, this Arts and Crafts mansion has the trappings of a country house hotel, yet is only a ten-minute drive from Newcastle centre.

Turn off a country lane down a tree-lined drive and your tensions will slip away when you glimpse this white stucco building with its pleasing Georgian symmetry.

Time and traffic slow down at the Seymour family’s hotel, within Jersey’s network of leafy Green Lanes, set around three sides of a flower-filled terrace garden with small pool.

You can’t fail to notice this Tudor building with its striking black-and-white timbered frontage.

‘Stunning’ views reach to the sea from the Grose family’s hotel, set in 19 acres of sub-tropical gardens along the South Devon National Trust coastline.

Large and contemporary, a hotel with a sleek spa and a private cinema in the buzzy Georgian quarter.

Just 15 minutes from the city centre, this Victorian townhouse offers a stylish retreat where cool design meets relaxing surrounds.

The classic, white-painted, 19th-century façade of this family-run Pimlico hotel, on a uniformly attractive and tranquil garden square, gives no clue to the high-tech boutique interiors.

Guests receive royal treatment at this ‘superb, wonderful’ and discreet hotel on the fifth floor of a historic building close to Buckingham Palace.

In a ‘beautiful Yorkshire Dales setting’, an aura of ‘laid-back luxury without pretensions’ is found at Charlotte and David Reilly‘s hotel in a former Victorian schoolhouse and headmaster’s house by the River Ure.

Across the causeway from St Michael’s Mount, light streams into this ‘tactfully modernised and enlarged’ beachfront restaurant-with-rooms.