Markel is, I believe, a much better run firm. Just not one that I have owned in recent years. I made a lot of money then got out in 2018 when I thought it was richly valued, and by the time it was cheap again it was 2020 and a "target rich environment" and I went into other things. On the surface of things, it looks pretty reasonably priced at the moment. It wouldn't be hard to make the case that it's currently a good business at a fair price.

PS
My first thought was that selling and then forgetting about such a fine firm on a short term price pop was a classic short sighted mistake. But perhaps not.

Since the day I sold, 8.13 years ago, Markel's real book per share is up inflation + 6.73%/year, not too shabby.
But the stock's price is up only inflation + 3.16%/year, since price/book has fallen from 1.591 when I sold, down to 1.206 today.
I don't greatly regret missing out on real return of 3.16%/year.

When I pulled up my tables of historical book value and price, I noticed that Berkshire's real book per share growth has been remarkably steady (or at least in an unchanging range) for many years. Markel's, by contrast, used to be a consistently higher growth rate than Berkshire, but is lately a consistently lower growth rate. Say, for intervals ending ~2017 or later. I'm not sure that relative performance result can be extrapolated--clearly it can change--but it's enough that one wouldn't see an obvious numerical justification for "switch to Markel, they're smaller and should grow faster".

Jim