Great discoveries have been made in a bath in Greece and an orchard in England. I make my contribution in the library bar at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner.
Visits to this hotel are tinged with sadness as it’s where my great-uncle died in 1975. He had been residing at the Hyde Park Hotel, now the Mandarin Oriental, since the mid 1930s – yes, really – and died in St. George’s Hospital, now the Lanesborough Hotel. (The hospital closed in 1980 and relocated to Tooting.) He stayed in the same smallish bedroom overlooking the park for all of his stay of some forty years. In the war his contribution was to invite my father and his brother officers to put their drinks at the hotel bar on his account. When I came to live in London the barman fondly remembered my uncle’s penchant for green Crème De Menthe.
But I digress, as usual. Flipping through the bar menu I made my discovery; the Rule of Seven. Everything is priced at almost exactly seven times its cost price, for example: Red Bull £1/£7, French chardonnay £5/£38, a club sandwich £3.50/£24. Like all rules it has an exception, namely the Dry Martini, competitively priced at £18 and containing at least a quadruple measure of premium gin that would cost around £5. Then consider the triple-decker mini cakestand of nibbles and factor in the small bowl of pickled onions, olives and gherkins and you are looking at a nourishing, cheap luncheon in agreeable surroundings with a selection of high-end dailies to read thrown in gratis.
After lunch. it’s a short walk through Green Park to Hatchards to buy a few presents, including one for myself, The Warden, in a beautiful new hardback edition celebrating its choice by Hatchards as the best novel of the past 200 years. If you ask nicely, there is under the counter a pamphlet called Our Favourite Novels Of The Past 200 Years. Do ask for it. They are listed in chronological order going from Emma (1815) to Private Peaceful (2003), the only 21st century entry. You will have read many of them but I’m looking forward to making some discoveries.
My grandmother lived for about 20 years in Brown’s Hotel until she was 100 ( she died aged 104). She, too, had a penchant for crème de menthe frappee ( missing accent, I know), a perfectly disgusting drink. When she was in her 90’s she liked to smoke one of my cigarettes with her crème de menthe and looked like a caricature of a venerable madame in a very high class brothel.
Oh dear, I liked a spot of the green stuff myself when I was in the Irish Guards, in 1973 before my tastes were properly formed. The Commanding Officer looked at my glass and said just two words – “tarts’ toothpaste”. Now that I am a member of the Wine Society, thanks to your cousin John, I don’t drink it anymore.
Your commanding officer was sound as well as succinct.