A lunch good enough to lift Tory spirits 

Things could have been worse. My host was determined to lunch al fresco, and after all it was late June. Yet this is England and as everyone knows, even D-Day had to be postponed for 24 hours. In the event, we were fine. The elements were kindly. The temperature did not fall below 60, the rain held off, we more or less managed to forget about politics and it would have been hard to improve on the setting. Saint Jacques, a restaurant which I have often praised, always deservedly, has a courtyard and is next to Berry Bros: so this is a sophisticatedly bacchanalian quartier.

The sophistication may be recent. Behind St James’s Street and Pall Mall there are nooks, crannies and lanes, including Crown Passage. It is now home to a fine pub, the Red Lion, and an excellent Italian restaurant, Il Vicolo, another favourite of this column. But in earlier days, Crown Passage may have been a play on words. St James’s Palace is just over the road. Some monarchs and courtiers were on for a full bacchanalian romp with a certain tickling of passages et al. Even before Berry’s were in business, the St James’s equivalents of Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet may well have been plying their trade. No longer, however: all is respectable.

My host was Alan Eisner, a v. bon oeuf. Alan was a successful hedgie and forex trader but he always intended to do more with his life. His parents were Jewish: his father, a refugee from the Mordor of Nazism. They always felt that they owed the country which had rescued them a lifelong debt of gratitude and thanksgiving, an inheritance which they instilled in their children.