Where to take Jubilee tea: Fortnum & Mason reviewed

I went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace once. It is coloured in my memory like childhood. There are good Canalettos and fitted carpets inside because that is self-confidence. In the garden the Queen stood with diplomats, safe from confessions, tears and requests for football tickets. (People do this. They write to her for FA Cup Final tickets. They think she is a witch.) She looks like a benevolent sweet from afar, but I am fond of the Queen of my ideation since she replied to my son’s birthday greeting with a very civil letter which he lost.

I am no monarchist – competition, I suppose, though the Jews have a very passive-aggressive prayer for her: ‘May God in his everlasting kingdom bless our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth [in her mortal one]…’ The Buckingham Palace tea was builder’s tea and fairy food, which is a fair description of England and herself. Savagery and politesse: duality. As a food critic I call it perfect. As a journalist I call marketing. She is very good at marketing, as I don’t think she could pull a sword from a stone.

I can’t tell if monarchists have too much imagination or none at all. But we are all guilty of that. I celebrate – well, I mark – the Jubilee at Fortnum & Mason because I can’t face Quaglino’s and the Goring didn’t ring me back. The Queen and Fortnum & Mason have too much in common to ignore. If she were a meat counter, she would be this one. This is entirely deliberate, and cynical: Fortnum’s has become a franchise, like the Liberal Democrats. I discovered this when eating smoked salmon at a Fortnum’s Bar in Heathrow Terminal 5 at 7 a.m.: the dream will follow you to the exit.