The Egerton House Hotel

Two Victorian red-brick townhouses on Egerton Terrace, joined into a single 28-room hotel in 1990 and run since 2005 by the family-owned Red Carnation Hotel Collection. The rooms carry Beatrice Tollman's own art, including Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs and works by Picasso and Matisse, alongside an open fire in the ground-floor Drawing Room and a bar that has built a following on its martini list.

The hotel keeps a single event space, the Dining Room, where breakfast and afternoon tea are served by day and which converts for private dinners and drinks. A round table seats up to sixteen; rearranged for a standing reception it takes twenty. Bay-window daylight, a working fireplace, mirrored display shelving and high-speed Wi-Fi, with the hotel's own team handling the arrangements.

The scale suits a graduation lunch, a christening, an anniversary dinner or a small business gathering rather than a large party. Five minutes from Harrods and the V&A, it is Knightsbridge at its most private.