By kind permission of Rules Restaurant,
Covent Garden.
The actors and actresses who have passed through Rules are legion. Down the decades Rules has been an unofficial "Green Room" for the world of entertainment from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier, and the history of the English stage adorns the walls. The sibling art of the cinema has contributed its own distinguished list of names including those of Buster Keaton, Charles Laughton, Clark Cable, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore.
The past lives on at Rules and can be seen on the walls all around you - captured in literally hundreds of drawings, paintings and cartoons. The late John Betjeman, then Poet Laureate, described the ground floor interior as "unique and irreplaceable, and part of literary and theatrical London".
The King Edward Room, an intimate, velvet-swagged room on the first floor, by the lattice window, was once the most celebrated "Table for Two" in London. This was the Prince of Wales' favourite spot for wining and dining the beautiful actress Lily Langtry. So frequent were his visits that Rules put in a special door to enable the Prince to enter and leave without having to walk through the restaurant. Their signed portraits still hang on the walls.
The Charles Dickens Room, a private dining room, is named after the writer who has pride of place in the restaurant's private pantheon because his association with Rules was so poignant. As a young boy he often wandered hungry through the streets and alleys of Covent Garden, his wage from the blacking factory allowing him only a sniff of the mouth-watering aromas that rose from the kitchens. He never got those hard times, even when he could afford to enjoy the restaurant later in his life. Rules' memorabilia include playbills for performances of "Not So Bad As We Seem" and "Mr Nightingale's Diary", which Dickens produced and performed in, and which he brought to the restaurant himself.
The Greene Room is of course named after Graham Greene, a voluntary exile from Britain who spent much of his life in the South of France, but who still chose to spend all his birthdays in the quintessentially British surroundings of Rules. He was certain to visit the restaurant whenever he returned to London, and it features in several of his books including The End of the Affair. Letters from Greene and his sister Elizabeth are displayed on the walls of the Greene Room, bearing witness to Rules' long and happy association with the man widely considered to be Britain's greatest twentieth century writer.
Rules serves the traditional food of this country at its best. It specialises in classic game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings. Rules is fortunate in owning an estate in the High Pennines, "England's last wilderness", which supplies game for the restaurant. Reservations are essential; phone 0171-836-5314.
Next: The Grill Room at the Cafe Royal in Regent Street
Copyright
© 1998 by Elizabeth Sharland. All rights reserved.