The Mayfair Townhouse

The designers have really gone to town on this city sister to Cliveden House, Taplow, and Chewton Glen, New Milton (see entries), spread over a row of Georgian townhouses on Half Moon Street in swanky W1. ‘It has a playful personality and oodles of eccentricity,’ says our inspector, with ‘nods to Oscar Wilde’, who set The Importance of Being Earnest on Half Moon Street. In reception, Clarita Brinkerhoff’s peacock sculpture, made from 25,000 Swarovski crystals, is called Alfie after Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The ‘flamboyant and theatrical’ Dandy bar is ideal for a spot of Bunburying over cocktails. Bedrooms and suites, some with garden terrace, are ‘decorated in seductive shades’ and supplied with ‘plenty of treats’, including an espresso machine and tipples in a minibar. ‘Ours, in Art Deco style, had a gold statement lamp standing out against navy furnishings.’ You can graze on large and small plates the whole day in the bar, and in the lower-ground-floor Club Room, hung with ‘quirky takes on the usual ancestral portraits’. ‘The burger was enormous, with delicious sweet-potato fries.’ Dogs, allowed in the bar, get ‘treats, meals, a bed, even a bathrobe’.