Hazlitt’s

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 final diatribes, and antiques and furnishings keep faith with a bygone age. Bedrooms have a carved oak or four-poster bed, Victorian bathroom fittings. A suite has a sitting room with working fireplace, a garden with sliding glass roof. All have air conditioning, a minibar, modern plumbing, Land & Water toiletries (no chamber pot, Denmark wash or wig powder). The staff are ‘welcoming and friendly’. Public rooms are ‘cosy, with fireplaces, immaculately presented’. Venture out to a local coffee house, or sit tight with a drink from the library honesty bar, comestibles from a 24-hour room-service menu. At breakfast, send for cereal and croissants, a Buck’s Fizz and one of those new-fangled bread-and-meat confections so lately made popular by the Earl of Sandwich. (See also London sister ventures The Rookery and Batty Langley’s.)