The Good Hotel Guide 2002: Great Britain and Ireland (Good Guides) Book

When a book has the kind of unassailable reputation that The Good Hotel Guide has garnered over the years, there must be a temptation to ease up a little, and coast on past glories. It's to the credit of editors Caroline Raphael and Desmond Balmer that there is no sign of such sloppiness in this 25th edition: the judgements are as crisp and authoritative as ever, with each assessment of the virtues (or otherwise) of a hotel always cogently argued. And it's often the demerits of a hotel that strike the reader as strongly as its virtues, even though such paragraphs are brief; after all, if a hotel were completely beyond the pale, it wouldn't make the final cut here. By now, we all know the features that have made this guide so non-pareil over the years: the pithy, well-detailed essays on all the places covered, the clear, colour maps, the exhaustive coverage of every worthwhile hotel in the country (often supplemented by pithy vox pop contributions from guests). All this, of course, is shored up with such useful features as the César Awards celebrating the best hotels in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the highly entertaining "partisan view of rival guides and hotel groups", in which the GHG uses its moral superiority gained from taking no advertising of any kind to give an unbuttoned view of its competitors. But, as always, it's the spot-on assessments of the virtues and failings of the places we'll be staying at that makes this as invaluable in its 25th edition as it was on its premier appearance, such as this judgement on a hotel in Hartfield: An idyllic spot ... very romantic, if a bit faded. Pooh Bridge at AA Milne's former home down the road is much visited, leading to defoliation of the nearby trees. You should bring your own twigs if you wish to play Pooh Sticks. --Barry ForshawRead More