Durrant's Hotel

Durrant's has stood on George Street since the 1790s, four Georgian townhouses knocked into one and run by the same family for more than a century. The ground floor is a warren rather than a lobby: pine-panelled sitting rooms, a working fireplace, a bar counter tucked behind a doorway, and a dining room lined with green leather banquettes. Nothing has been restyled to look older than it is, which is why it reads as a house rather than a hotel.

Five rooms are let for private hire, and they are genuinely different from one another. The Regatta Room sits on the lower ground floor with its own entrance and its own champagne bar, and takes fifty for dinner or eighty standing. The Oak Room is the panelled set piece, with a grandfather clock that belonged to the owner's grandfather and portraits along the walls. The Spy Room takes its name from the Leslie Ward caricatures that cover one wall, and turns from a boardroom into a sixteen-cover dining room or a fifty-guest reception. The Wallace Room and the Armfield Room are smaller sitting rooms, hung with rotating art and stacked with books.

Banqueting menus come out of the same kitchen as the restaurant's à la carte. Audio-visual equipment is brought in per event rather than installed, and the Regatta Room carries its own cinema system. The Wallace Collection is across the square.