Library Bar at The Lanesborough Hotel

The setting is grown-up relaxed, old fashioned and clubby, the park is just across the road, the atmosphere is friendly and the pianist is great. Some of the best cocktail bars in the world are in hotels and the Lanesborough clearly put time and effort into creating a darkly intimate bar for people who like things well done.

All they need to add to make this a great place are staff who can see and someone to make the drinks.

The Library Bar at The Lanesborough hotel is a perfect place to relax with a drink to the sound of the grand piano – immerse yourself in the memory of an almost forgotten era of refinement and sophistication. It may be expensive, but it's worth it.

Very disappointed!

The Library Bar used to be a wonderful example of perfect service set in a room that brings to mind a Gentleman's club. A quintessentially British experience.

Sadly the charming Brits have been replaced by smarmy Italians, the worst of whom is managing the door. Not only do they seem to have a select seating policy – not previously the case (so expact to be seated in a lack-lustre annex if the bar is busy), but the previously crisp and courtious service has been replaced by a mediterranian indifference that whilst maintaining an efficiency, can just as easily be found in any club or bar on the high street.

I called the Lanesborough to book a table in the Library Bar a month early, but on arrival was met with a rude and irritable little man who physically blocked our way to the bar and insisted that it ‘was not possible’ that I had left a booking.

Not the place that I remember; go to the Connaught.