About The Lifestyle Edit

Everything is visited in person. Nothing is written from a press release, a press trip itinerary or a photo library. If we have not stayed, eaten, walked or used it, it does not appear.

We pay our own way. Rooms, meals, tickets and products are paid for at the normal price wherever possible. Where anything is complimentary, it is stated in the piece. There is no paid placement and no affiliate revenue behind the scores.

We review unannounced. Visits are made as an ordinary guest or customer. Contact with a venue, where it happens at all, comes afterwards and only to check facts.

Judged against its own claim. A farmhouse pub and a country-house hotel are not held to the same standard. Each place is measured against what it sets out to be and what it charges for it.

Every review ends with a broken-down score out of ten, so you can see which parts carried the result rather than taking a single number on trust. The components vary by subject — a hotel is scored on things a festival is not — but typically cover the setting, the rooms or space, the food and drink, the service, and the value for what is charged.

As a rough guide: 9 and above means we would travel specifically for it; 8 means it is very good and worth a detour if you are nearby; 7 means it does its job well with reservations we have named; below 7 means something is not working, and the piece says what.

Each review also lists who it is for and who it is not for. Most disappointment is a mismatch of expectations rather than a bad place.