Cliveden House

Few English hotels carry a guest list like Cliveden's. The Italianate mansion above the Thames at Taplow was bought in 1893 by American magnate William Waldorf Astor and given to his son Waldorf as a wedding present. Under Nancy Astor — the first woman to take her seat as an MP — it became the most politically charged drawing room in the country, entertaining Churchill, Kipling and Henry James, and later supplying the setting for the Profumo affair.

The Astors left the estate to the National Trust in 1942, and today it is the Trust's only privately run country house hotel: 376 acres of woodland and formal gardens, a parterre stepping down to the river, Lord Astor's sculpture collection, a water garden and a maze. Guests have the run of it, including in the quiet hours after the day visitors go home.

Inside, the rooms and suites keep the scale of the original house — panelling, portraits, the Great Hall with its vast fireplace. The restaurant handles the formal dining, the spa sits in the walled garden with indoor and outdoor pools, and vintage launches run Champagne cruises from the hotel's own Thames moorings. Spring Cottage, a standalone summerhouse on the riverbank, sleeps six.