‘It is impossible to criticise this hotel,’ wrote a reader, praising everything from the service to the ‘delicious food’ at this mellow stone hotel. Owned by the Cotswold Inns and Hotels group (see also The Lamb Inn, Burford), it stands in woodland and gardens, close to the National Arboretum. ‘They frequently upgrade us,’ another Guide (and hotel) regular reports – as they do the rooms, most recently the large modern bedrooms in Silkwood Court. Main house and coach house rooms blend country house and contemporary style; the Magnolia suite has a private garden terrace and hot tub. All rooms have ‘every facility’, along with robes, Molton Brown toiletries. The hare motif crops up everywhere, in fabrics, pictures, ornaments, even in Jack Hare’s bar, where you can eat simply by the open fire. In the Beaufort restaurant, Pete Lias’s ‘very good’, imaginative locally sourced dishes include braised venison and root vegetable casserole, grain mustard dumplings. A minor grumble from a reader, who ‘did not like’ the buffet-style breakfast, but, happily, silver service has been restored for the likes of oak-smoked salmon, scrambled eggs; 
a kipper or full English. (MC)