I read the Financial Times every Saturday, mainly because its magazine still contains some of the best book reviews. One of its more quirky features is “Lunch with the FT”, in which a journalist takes some grandee out to lunch at the paper’s expense and, under cover of that, conducts a half-baked interview. This week, the guest was Professor Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian. The lunch was in Wilton’s, a ludicrously expensive restaurant just off Jermyn Street in London. What interested me about the piece was not so much the content (which was pretty banal) as the bill:

1 x crab and avocado salad
1 x asparagus with Bernaise sauce
2 x poached halibut
2 x summer pudding
1 x expresso
1 x bottle of mineral water
1 x half bottle of Pouilly Fume

Total: £169.88