We are a small group of well-known hotel critics, founded by Sunday Telegraph columnist Fiona Duncan and Former Charming Small Hotel Guides series editor Leonie Glass.
We love good hotels, hotels with character, authenticity and commitment. We hate the bland, the boring and the rip-off. We demand value for money, and we know the best hotels.
Fiona's expertise on hotels began In 1986 when she and her husband Andrew Duncan launched the Charming Small Hotel Guides, and she became, along with her great friend and colleague, Leonie Glass, series editor and principal author of the series, travelling all over Europe to find and describe lovely, individual, personally run hotels. In 1998 she contributed her first travel article to the Sunday Telegraph, for which she has since written regularly, beginning her weekly column Hotel Guru In 2006.
Leonie has been a travel writer and editor for more than 25 years. After three years at Hutchinson, working first for a fiction editor then editing educational books, she moved to Mitchell Beazley, where she edited the American Express Pocket travel guides and met Fiona Duncan. After the birth of her first child, she went freelance and became, with Fiona, principal author of Duncan Petersen's Charming Small Hotel Guides.
Founder and former MD of Travelintelligence.com, James teamed up with online publisher James Blackwell to launch Worldreviewer in the summer of 2007. James has spent much of his life travelling: from early voyages across the sands of the Sahara and up the Niger to Timbuktou, to one of the last of the 'Magic Buses' to run the route from the Charing Cross Road to Delhi, from jail in Morocco to the snows of Kilamanjaro.
James Jayasundera is Founder and Managing Director of Ampersand Travel in London. Of Sri Lankan and English descent he was brought up in Rome and has been travelling throughout Indian subcontinent and South East Asia all his life. Although he loves his comfort he is not blinded by five star luxuries – his motto is “luxury is in the experience” and it is that indefinable quality that makes something special which he is always on the look-out for.
Daisy currently lives in London but claims her head is always somewhere else. "I was lucky to grow up with parents who adored traveling and wanted to share their experiences with me and my three brothers," she says. "Now I'm hooked and get itchy feet if I stay still too long." Fortunately, she has a husband and young daughter to keep her busy and contented when grounded.
Darren Taffinder is a British writer. He writes regularly on parenting and travel for publications including The Sunday Telegraph, Handbag.com, All About You, Go Mama Today, and Food & Travel Magazine. Currently, he lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.
David is an award-winning, full-time freelance writer based in England's Northwest. He writes widely for newspapers and magazines from The Observer to Wanderlust, covering all aspects of travel from green to business via family and likes emerging destinations. He has lived in Japan and South America, travelling extensively in both destinations. More recently he has been contracted as author of the Lonely Planet guide to Wales and judged the National Tourism Awards for Wales.
Gabriele Civiliene worked for eight years in Lithuania for UK publisher Pearson Education in their sales and marketing department, with responsibility for the Baltic States. At the same time, she continued to teach English at Kaunas Technology University. Passionate about language, she also speaks Russian, Polish and some Spanish as well as her native Lithuanian.
George Pownall was a film-maker and freelance writer for many years. Shooting his award-winning documentaries took him round the world and to every corner of Britain, staying in hotels varying from the palatial to the downright disgusting. An enthusiastic cook, and after all these years, still an enthusiast for a good hotel, he is married to a food journalist.
After reading English at Worcester University, Marcus travelled through Asia and Australia before completing a Postgraduate in Periodical Journalism at the London College of Communication in 1999. He worked as a staff writer for two travel websites before going freelance in 2001. He has since written travel features for a wide variety of UK papers, magazines and websites including The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, the London Evening Standard, the Sunday Times Travel Magazine, Wanderlust, Marie Claire, easyJet, Summit Hotels, Expedia.com and thisistravel.co.uk.
Mary Lussiana has loved hotels for as long as she can remember - and written about them for more than 20 years. Not even five years on the other side of the fence, as Public Relations Manager at a Leading Hotel of the World (the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw) put her off. Now living in Portugal with her husband and two youngest children, she continues to travel and write on hotels, food and spas for a variety of publications, including Condé Nast Traveller, House and Garden, Harper's Bazaar, The Times and the Sunday Telegraph.
Nicky Swallow has lived in Florence since 1981 and has been writing about Florence, Tuscany and other Italian regions for over 10 years. Having travelled widely throughout Italy and specialising in articles about hotels, food and restaurants, she is a regular contributor to the Time Out guides Italian titles, is the editor of the Charming Small Hotel Guide to Tuscany & Umbria and is author of the Insideout guides to Milan, Florence, Naples and Cape Town.
Simone Topolski has been travel-writing since 2002, when she started writing city features for independent fashion magazine All Access. While continuing to work in retail management she completed a journalism post-grad in 2005 and continued to write for various magazines including W9 and Yoga & Health. She finally took the plunge and went full-time freelance in May 2006 and has written for various publications including Conde Nast Traveller, Time Out, The Intelligent Traveller magazine and Wanderlust.
Melbourne-born Tobi Cohen cut her travel and lifestyle journalism teeth at British Airways' High Life magazine. She now edits the MyTravel magazine Recline and writes about hotels for Conde Nast Traveller, Daily Candy, Vogue Entertainment & Travel (Australia) and the Daily Mail. St Petersburg is a city she knows well, and a city to which she keeps returning.
Tristram's passion for foreign cultures was sparked by a trip around the world at the age of 19. He then went on to study English at Newcastle University, and so began an insatiable interest in books and literature. Since leaving Newcastle he has worked primarily in sales, promotions and marketing, whilst still managing to squeeze in a couple more long-haul trips.
Robin Gauldie has been a compulsive traveller all his life. As a hairy student, he hitch-hiked all over Europe, Morocco and Turkey. After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1976, he worked as a reporter on local newspapers in Scotland and London before joining the pan-European travel industry newspaper Travel Trade Gazette Europa in 1979...
Travel writer Louise Farquhar has hiked, biked, skied and horse-ridden her way through some stunning country. After graduating from Glasgow University with a law degree in 1993 Louise embarked on a series of adventures which provided the fuel for many stories published at home and abroad...
Sonja began her career in the mid 90’s as a secondary school teacher in London teaching Science and Physical Education (Sonja was an international swimmer and simply adores nice pools and spas!) swiftly climbing to Head of Faculty. All the holiday-time associated with teaching allowed Sonja months to travel extensively around the world, from journeying across China on a third-class (“hard seat”) train to reclining on a 5-star beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands!
MD of Tanzania Odyssey is also a Director of ATTA, (The African Travel and Tourism Association), and is a grizzled guru in the world of African Safaris. Marc started Africa Archipelago in 1996, arranging safaris throughout East and Southern Africa, but began to specialise in then lesser-known Tanzania itineraries. This led to the creation of Tanzania Odyssey in 2000, a focused, specialist company providing the very best itineraries and safari support in Tanzania.
Clare spent her childhood in Nigeria, Switzerland and Germany and ever since has had an incurable wanderlust. Her favourite destinations are Ladahk, Society Islands, Los Angeles and Cambodia. Clare worked as Travel Editor for London Portrait Magazine in the 1980s and has been a regular contributor for The Sunday Telegraph travel for the last eleven years. Clare lives in Suffolk with her three children.
Lincoln read law at Oxford, then worked as a shipping lawyer for seven years before becoming a full time artist and sculptor, with his first show in New York. He specialises in mobile sculptures for contemporary buildings around the world, including Cathay Pacific's headquarters in Hong Kong. In the course of his work and travels he became determined to enjoy the inevitable hotel life, and has put a great deal of thought into what makes a good hotel and what doesn't – and why. For over thirty years he has travelled extensively, particularly in India, the Far East and the USA, always on the look out for great places to stay.
Louise divides her time between writing (about travel, film, art, music, theatre, fashion, literature, architecture, TV and interiors), editing (sections of various magazines including Premiere UK, Total Film and Wonderland) and acting (most notably on TV in the BBC’s Bleak House and Sherlock, and on stage for Sir Peter Hall). She has interviewed hundreds of celebrities from Liv Tyler to The Pet Shop Boys and is the co-editor of the Charming Small Hotels Guide to France.
Louise Tickle is a Gloucestershire-based freelance journalist whose activity and wildlife travel writing for publications including The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, Elle, Coast, BBC Wildlife and BBC Countryfile has encompassed testing out a luxury bootcamp in Crete and sea kayaking in the Outer Hebrides to tracking otters on Shetland and learning to sail catamarans in the Caribbean.
Lucy’s passion for travel and hotels began on a six-month backpacking trip to South and Central America in 2002. Since then she has worked as a PR consultant and freelance journalist, contributing to idFX magazine and the Spectator as well as her own blog. Her background in interiors has given her a keen eye for the aesthetics of her surroundings. Originally from Yorkshire, Lucy loves the English countryside as well as exploring more foreign terrains: with recent trips abroad including India, Dubai and America, she is always looking for new destinations and adventures.
The older son of Fiona Duncan and her husband Andrew (publisher of the Charming Small Hotel Guides), Alexander spent much of his youth staying in some of the world's most charming hotels with his parents and has now taken to writing about them himself. Aside from this, he pursues his main job as a freelance videographer. You can see his work at www.alexanderduncan.co.uk. Alexander is also a keen photographer and often contributes images to his parents’ publications.
Geraldine Keith has written extensively on both travel and interiors, having worked in the past on the staff of a successful London magazine, Portrait, and now on Life magazines for various towns in Hampshire where she now lives. She loves traveling when not looking after her family and has spent three months in India, at the same time garnering reviews for the Hotel Guru website.
Travel has always played an important part in Helena’s life – from sailing in Suffolk to an overland journey from Nepal to Tibet. She studied French and Italian at Bristol University, which included five months studying and living in Turin, followed by five months working at the tourist office in Montpellier. Helena is now back in London and works in travel PR. Favourite destinations to date include Tibet, Chile, the Languedoc Roussillon region, travelling down the Mekong in Laos and anywhere where there’s the chance to try out a new language.
Rachel runs the translation division of leading literary agency Peters Fraser and Dunlop, representing writers all over the world, a career which combines her passions of reading and travel. A horror of soulless 'business' hotels has led to years of seeking out individual and characterful places to stay.
Good food, in fact haute cuisine, used to be the driving force behind forays away from home; hotels were just a place to rest before the next gastronomic feast, but as the years have passed, the joy of a comfortable bed, a decent bathroom, an enviable location and excellent service have acquired significantly more weight, as has Hugh. He has written for the Sunday Telegraph and founded the Ski Club of Great Britain's Chalet & Hotel Guide. He now works for Worldreviewer and lives in Scotland.
Charlotte has a keen passion for the arts and all things cultural, in particular, hunting out undiscovered finds whether it be a tiny restaurant in Paris or a quirky guesthouse in Malta. She has a penchant for interior design, architecture, literature, art, photography and good food, which is reflected in her written work. Charlotte currently lives in Kent and holds the position of editor at local lifestyle magazine Vine in Sevenoaks. She loves to get away at any opportunity, however, and is always looking for new destinations to enjoy and share with others.
