Liana, for the quieter evening

Quiet is underrated, and Liana has built her evenings around it. She is gentle in manner and graceful in movement, and she has an intuitive sense of when a guest wants conversation and when a guest would rather sit in comfortable silence with a glass of wine. It is not a technique. She simply pays attention, and she is very good at it.

Slim, 167 cm, with the straight back that comes from years of pilates, she keeps her chestnut brown hair long and very straight, and her eyes are brown and kind. The clothes are classic and romantic, a silk blouse, a pleated skirt, pearls on a good day. She is in her late twenties and reads French novels in translation, Colette and Flaubert mostly, on the bus and in the bath. English is the language she uses with guests, soft and precise.

Her favourite corner of the West End is Mount Street Gardens, a small green square behind the Connaught where the benches carry dedications and the plane trees block out the traffic. She will walk you through it at dusk and then round into the Connaught for a drink, where the lighting is low and nobody raises their voice. Gardening is her weekend passion, and she can name most of what grows in a London window box at a glance.

Liana lives in Marylebone, just north of Oxford Street, so Mayfair and its hotels are a ten minute walk away. Quiet weeknights suit her diary, ideally with a day's notice; ask Henrietta to pencil you in.