THE REVISIONIST

Having dared to bring back chintz at Beaverbrook in Surrey in 2018, a Townhouse sibling hotel should open this summer. A 14-bedroom hotel just off Sloane Square, it will also look to the hedonism of the 1920s for inspiration (beaverbrook.co.uk).

“We’ve tried to tap into Lord Beaverbrook’s life in London and there’s a nod to the art deco period when he would have been [there]; the aim is that you’ve been given an invitation into someone’s private house,” explains Nicola Harding.

Harding is not tied to history though – it comes through a prism of modernity and with a judicious blend of fun. At the Mitre (mitrehampton court.com) in Hampton Court, which opened last year, Harding mixed jukeboxes and hand-painted wallpaper in a 16th-century building on the River Thames.

So far, so grand. However, Harding’s work on The Rose (therosedeal. com) in the Kent seaside town of Deal demonstrates that revisionism can also be fun with affordable properties; rooms start at £90 including breakfast. “We wanted to do justice to its history as a seaside boarding house and make it whimsical,” she says.

“People’s appetites have changed over the past year,” she adds. “Either they will want exuberance or something simpler, more honest.” This was her aim at the Royal Oak (royal oakramsden.com) in Ramsden, Oxfordshire, close to where Harding moved after the second lockdown. “It’s a much simpler aesthetic”, she says, “it’s earthy and warm and cosy. That matters, too.”