The Spectator readers’ tea party, in pictures

We host a lot of events at The Spectator but we’ve just held our favourite: the readers’ tea party. About 200 subscribers come to the back garden for tea and cakes to meet our writers, our editors and each other. T-Sticks supplied the tea, H. Forman & Son the food and Taki brought along a bottle of Lagavulin for those in the mood for something stronger.

The thrill, for us in 22 Old Queen St, is meeting the people that we spend our working lives thinking about. It’s difficult to imagine a typical Spectator reader because they don’t really exist: this afternoon, for example, I met a policeman, a mathematician, a specialist in Chinese antiquities, a joiner and and a taxi driver. A man who had brought his son from Poland for a cuppa, and others who had braved Southern Rail. Some who had been subscribing for just a year, introduced to the magazine through our podcasts. And I met someone else who says she started subscribing when we were the only publication being rude about The Beatles at at time when everyone else loved them.