Cliveden House

Standing grandly above the Thames, in National Trust gardens and pleasure grounds, an Italianate mansion built by Charles Barry for the Duke of Sutherland ‘seems to have hosted everyone who is anyone’, from Winston Churchill to Lawrence of Arabia. A Relais & Châteaux hotel, it has ‘bedrooms filled with antiques and named after famous past guests’, of whom there have been many, from Lord Curzon and Mahatma Gandhi, when Nancy Astor held court here, to Meghan Markle on the night before her wedding. John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Lady Astor hangs in the Great Hall by a monumental Italian Renaissance fireplace, amid a sea of sofas. Bedrooms range from ‘club’ doubles to the Lady Astor Suite, with a private terrace and views over the spectacular parterre to the river. Some ‘classic’ rooms overlooking the spa garden have a terrace with a hot tub. You can take tea alfresco, address yourself to Cliveden fish stew, English rose veal or black truffle risotto under chandeliers in the dining room, or settle into a blue-painted banquette in the Astor Grill, in former stables, for a sharing platter, rib-eye steak or fish and chips. (JK)