I am fretting about this restaurant column’s election coverage and then I alight on something superficially grand and lovely, which has been hollowed out and is now useless and barely able to function: a shell. It is the Wolseley 2 – the Wolseley City – and this is perfect.

I name it the election restaurant, and Tories should eat here while they still have their shirts

Few restaurants are important, though I treasure Martha Gellhorn’s description of an operating theatre for the wounded of the Spanish Civil War which was once a restaurant in a grand hotel.