Best Western

Over the years we have stayed in a number of hotels steaming under the Best Western flag, in a number of countries. And we have been very satisfied with them.

We are also grateful to Best Western for sponsoring our evening fix of mystery drama on ITV3. It's not their fault that the adapters of Agatha Christie stories are prone to intrude Miss. Marple where she does not belong, that is to say in stories in which she does not appear in print.

So we were interested to come across the hotel illustrated in darkest Pimlico today, not far from Denbigh Street, the southern section of which was rather shabby in our student days and in which houses now go for £3m or more. We wondered whether it was the smallest Best Western in the world and were rather disappointed to find that it was an annex to the main hotel in fairly nearby Warwick Way.

That said, visitors paying off their taxi at Warwick Way might not be too pleased to find that they have to hump their transatlantic baggage up the road to the annex, ever so bijou might it be. Any more than we are pleased when we check into our attractively illustrated old country town hotel, perhaps covered in ivy and called the 'George and Dragon' or something like that, to find that we have been allocated one of the beach chalets erected in what used to be the garden.

Or have we got it completely wrong and the place illustrated is actually a house intended for short term lets, but one which you can book through Best Western without having to get involved with estate agents? One might think that there would be room for such a service in a town like London.