The case for curation over comparison
The web is thick with tables ranking a hundred rooms at once. We think the more useful question is a smaller one.
There is a certain comfort in a long list. It feels thorough, exhaustive, almost scientific — as though sheer volume were a substitute for judgement. We are not persuaded. A hundred rooms ranked by an algorithm tells you very little about how any single one of them feels to sit inside on a wet Tuesday evening.
So we do the unfashionable thing and feature one house at a time. It forces a discipline on us: we cannot hide a weak recommendation inside a crowd. If a room carries our spotlight, it is because a named editor has spent real time with it and would happily point a friend towards the front door.
Eleanor Whitcombe, Editor