Best hotels in London

A Victorian mansion block just around the corner from Westminster, the St Ermin's is a Grade II-listed hotel that has been a great deal more than just a place to sleep in its lifetime... Notable moments include Winston Churchill convening a wartime meeting that gave birth to the Special Operations Executive and the Cambridge Five plotting over drinks in the Caxton Bar. And, rumour has it, a tunnel runs directly to the Houses of Parliament. Inside, intricate Rococo plasterwork and a theatrical double staircase set the scene from the moment you walk in, and whilst the rooms are a little more understated, they are incredibly comfortable and well-appointed. Oh, and the afternoon tea, served with honey produced by the resident bees on the third floor, is very, very good.

Few corners of London do genteel quite like South Kensington, and The Kensington Hotel is quite at home in a row of white-stucco townhouses on a peaceful residential road. Inside, you'll feel as if you've stepped into a well-loved private home: high ceilings, heritage touches and pretty, handpicked furniture atop gorgeous hardwood floors. The atmosphere is charming and friendly, never stuffy, and the team is one of loveliest in the city. It helps that the neighbourhood is one of the city's most desirable, too, all garden squares, red-brick mansions and pavement cafés - and you're mere metres from the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, and the V&A.

Brown's has been taking in guests on Albemarle Street since 1832, which makes it one of London's oldest hotels – and it wears its age well. Built from a row of Georgian townhouses in the heart of Mayfair, the hotel has hosted royalty, presidents and a long line of writers. Kipling worked on The Jungle Book here over decades of writing retreats, Agatha Christie borrowed it for At Bertram's Hotel, and Alexander Graham Bell made Britain's first telephone call from the building in 1876. Now, a stay at Brown's is all wood panelling and deep armchairs contrasted with modern art and bright upholstery - and a good dose of personality, too.

Set on a quiet and marvellously-regal Belgravia street, The Goring opened its doors in 1910 and is still the epitome of English charm today. The character is full-blown Edwardian with footmen in red livery at the entrance, a flock of life-size wooden sheep posted by the hearth, and a degree of fuss that feels gloriously out of step with modern-day London. The very hotel where Kate Middleton spent the night before her royal wedding, the Goring has generations of regulars return precisely because so little changes. This is a hotel where everything is the result of decades of reflection and study, from a pillow plumped just right to meals known across the city.

For decades this enormous, triangular Whitehall building toiled away as a government institution, until it reopened in 2011 as a hotel... and remembered how to enjoy itself! Today, The Corinthia is a glorious riot of luxury and opulence in the most sophisticated of ways: ceilings that go up and up, a slow sweep of staircase, light catching gilt and glass, and always, a vast bouquet of fresh blooms in the centre of the lobby. Location-wise, you're on the the corner where Whitehall runs down to the Thames, and Westminster, Trafalgar Square and the South Bank are all only a short walk away. It does drama and class brilliantly, yet somehow never takes itself too seriously – and the afternoon tea is definitely worth skipping lunch for.

As you arrive at the Rosewood London, the noise of London's bustling streets seems to simply fade the background... Cross the courtyard, then sweep up an original marble staircase barely changed since the building's Edwardian heyday and into one of the capital's most reliably luxurious (and calm) hotels. Inside, the mood softens into something warm and residential with polished wood, deep sofas and flourishing bouquets at every turn, yet it really is in the thick of midtown, equidistant from the theatres of the West End and Covent Garden, as well as the buzz of the city. It's lavish yet refined and the service is, quite simply, impeccable.

The Mandarin Oriental has a foot in two worlds of London, both as iconic as the next: fashionable Knightsbridge and the royal parkland of Hyde Park – and this split personality has served it well since 1902. The hotel is a grande dame in the fullest sense, reimagined for today after a careful restoration, in which the iconic Edwardian architecture was combined with a softer, more contemporary edge. But with its liveried doormen, hushed corridors, and the sense of a place that has seen everyone and forgotten nothing, it still does old-school London with total, effortless conviction.

As soon as you walk through the revolving doors, past the footmen in tails, and into the calm elegance of the (beautiful) lobby, the decade seems to slip back a hundred years. Claridge's has been a Mayfair institution since the 1820s, but truly itself since the Roaring 20s, when bright young things made it their playground. Today, royalty and film stars still check in, and a century on, it still throws the best party in town. Inside, the hotel is the epitome of timeless glamour with plenty of Art Deco influence in the black-and-white floors and mirrored walls. Spend a day here and you'll float between afternoon tea, cocktails and the shops on the doorstep, barely noticing the hours roll by.