Violetta, companion in Central London

Somerset House at night is the best courtyard in the middle of London and Violetta uses it properly. She is 178 cm, tall and slender, black hair sleek and straight well past her shoulders, brown eyes. At 30 she is the most formally elegant arrival on this list and knows precisely how much of that to deploy in any given room.

Fluent English, spoken carefully. She is reserved when she arrives and then, once the evening has settled, dry and very funny indeed. She goes to the opera, reads three books at once and finishes all of them, and has an excellent instinct for when a guest wants conversation and when he simply wants company without any. She is not cold, though the first half hour can read that way, and she is much warmer company than her height and her posture lead people to expect.

Her central evening usually starts at Somerset House on the Strand, the winter rink or the summer fountains depending on the month, and a drink on the terrace with the river doing most of the work. Dinner follows on the Strand or in Covent Garden, six minutes away, and the Aldwych hotels are four. Violetta comes from Belgravia, twenty minutes on a clear evening, and she sends her leaving time so the desk can give you a real arrival. The Aldwych hotels are four minutes from the courtyard and she will walk it rather than wait for a car.

Her nights are kept on the Central London page. Durations and figures are given under rates. Tell booking the setting, the hour, and where you are staying.

Violetta is well suited to formal evenings and events where a guest is being introduced. Give Romilly the setting, the hour and the hotel when you write.

Every figure she works to is on the board of rates, and the rest is one message away.

Violetta gives an evening a shape without ever appearing to organise it. The courtyard first, a drink outside if the month allows, and a first half hour in which she is polite, precise and slightly unreadable. Guests who stop there miss the better part, because somewhere in the second hour the formality drops and a very dry sense of humour takes its place.

Dinner is long and the conversation goes properly into one or two subjects rather than skating across ten. Afterwards she likes the walk along the river, Waterloo Bridge if the wind is behaving, and then a quiet last hour wherever you are staying. She is exact about the finishing time and entirely graceful about it, which is the mark of somebody who has done this well for years.