Richard and Brian Prideaux-Brune, with Richard’s wife, Alison, run their Jacobean ancestral home as a characterful – some say eccentric – hotel where guests are ‘cosseted and cared for’ by ‘charming staff’. In a ‘timeless setting’ of log fires, gilt-framed portraits and antique sofas, the hosts, and their Labradors, extend a warm welcome. Some guests find the large old house showing its age (‘like the rest of us’), but fans come for the good humour, the hearty food, the sense of ‘true escape’ – the authentic country house experience. Bedrooms are comfortable, if dated, with liberal use of floral fabrics, and ‘lovely views’ of the ‘well-cared-for gardens’ and surrounding countryside. This year the bedrooms in the main house have been redecorated in contemporary Farrow & Ball colours with new carpets, new bathrooms and walk-in showers. Each is provided with home-made shortbread and (the height of modernity!) ‘colour television’. Ten, in a converted stone barn, have views of the river and topiary courtyard. All is ‘wonderfully quiet’. Front-of-house man Richard Prideaux-Brune mixes a mean Bloody Mary; his brother, Brian, cooks ‘excellent dinners’ (‘though we would have liked more variety’) and Sunday lunches – perhaps roast pork, apricot, rosemary jus; halibut gratinée with chorizo. (H and FN, and others)