Malmaison Reading

Another Malmaison hotel means another charming, storied old building, its exterior lovingly restored and its interior thoroughly renovated, resulting in a stylish and deeply comfortable boutique hotel. Put that way it sounds like a bit of a formula, but people only complain about formulas when they’re bad ones — in this case, why tamper with success?

The building in question is an old Great Western railway hotel, built by none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It fell on some pretty hard times (read: fire) but that’s what property developers are for — if it had remained a successful rail hotel then Malmaison could never have snapped it up and installed their trademark dark, clubby and masculine look throughout.

Where there’s a railway hotel there’s naturally a rail station — in this case just across the road — which makes the Malmaison Reading more likely for quick-break Londoners (it’s less than an hour away) than for style-hungry jet-setters just in from Milan or Tokyo on some kind of sexy business trip. That said, the swanky brasserie and bar don’t discriminate — locally sourced cuisine and top-shelf cocktails taste about as fine to your aunt and uncle from Swindon as they do to international men and women of mystery.