Bruce Anderson

Glyndebourne in the City

Early last century, an impoverished youth emerged from the East End. Able and hard-working, he discovered — as many had before him — that the City offered an open route to opportunity and riches. By the early 1950s, Rudolph Palumbo decided he could afford a family office. So he commissioned a Queen Anne building on Walbrook. Although it could not compensate for the City’s grievous architectural losses during the war, it was a reassertion of old values: of a long tradition that finance and the fine arts could march together.

Forty years on, Rudolph’s son Peter was having lunch with Mark Birley at the Connaught. Mark, son of Oswald, a much underrated painter, had as much taste as any Englishman in the 20th century. ‘What are you going to do with that building of yours?’ he enquired. ‘I thought of turning it into a club, but only if you’ll design it,’ said Peter. (Mark was the chastellain of Annabel’s). ‘I’d better ask what it will cost. Would a million be enough?’ Mark shrugged his shoulders. The total was twice that, as Peter pointed out, wryly rather than reproachfully.

Twenty years later, this seems like a bargain. The Walbrook is an enchantment: Glyndebourne in the City. The average member has probably spent the morning on the captain’s quarter-deck of his bank or giving orders to trading floors across much of the globe. At lunchtime, he can escape from the counting-house to the country house. The atmosphere is gentle; the standards are of the highest. Young Philip Palumbo, who now runs the Walbrook, always carries a discreet notebook. In a wholly unshouty fashion, he believes in perfectionism — until they invent something better.

Needless to say, the food is excellent. The founding chefs were Michel and Albert Roux.

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