West End churls | 4 August 2016

Piccadilly is ill-served by cafés, unless you consider House of Caviar a cafe. There is a Caffè Nero by St James’s church, which is Wren’s ugliest; either he leaked all his anger into it or bricks simply confounded him. There is a Starbucks by the Wolseley, a Costa across the road and an Eat off Jermyn Street; otherwise there is only Paul, which has good bread, enchanting service and a stupid name. But whimsical French patisserie doesn’t work in St James’s, which is very self-consciously English; it feels like a theme park in sugar. So tourists on a budget must go to Chinatown or, worse, Patisserie Valerie, whose window display is so fantastical it could be wrought by a bulimic Edwardian ghost. Better to eat at Putin’s polonium sushi bar, Itsu.

So the 5th View Restaurant (it’s a café, with another stupid name) on the fifth floor of Waterstones should be wonderful; this is the biggest bookshop in Europe. What are more comforting than books these days, even if the ground-floor gift shop swells greedily toward fiction, like an octopus covered in Paddington Bear stickers? (Don’t fancy a book? Buy something near a book. Buy a pencil case. Buy a mantra. Buy a Peter Rabbit with wheels.) But it isn’t. It is a vacuum that serves food. I was hoping for something with imagination; something worthy of the books. It doesn’t even grope, twitching, for an identity. It is lazier than that.

The shop is an early modernist masterpiece, even if it does look slightly like Robocop’s face. It was built, in 1936, for the menswear brand Simpsons. Its history is grand, its finishings exquisite; when a minor writer (my favourite kind, for they are essential) tossed himself down the staircase to his death, it was a tribute, for who kills themselves in WH Smith? During the war its members’ club was closed to provide baths and beds for soldiers; later, it was the inspiration for Grace Brothers in Are You Being Served? It was sold to Waterstones in 1999 and is now its weirdly named ‘flagship’ shop.