I hadn't been to Rules since the mid-1980s and all I remembered of the place was a heavy atmosphere of dark wood, hefty carpets, thick sauces and sturdy-bottomed English lunchers. Heaviness was my main impression; but then history, of a dense, richly-flavoured kind, hangs around Rules like mayoral chains. It's England's oldest restaurant, founded by Thomas Rule in 1798. It's been owned by only three families in 200 years. It's seen off nine English monarchs. It turns up in several novels: the adulterous couple in Graham Greene's The End of the Affair enjoyed their first lurve tryst here over a furtive dish of seductive onions.
When in 1971 it was threatened by the GLC with relocation to another site, John Betjeman wrote to the public enquiry, calling Rules "an excellent restaurant... its interior on the ground floor is unique and irreplaceable, and part of literary and theatrical London". Thackeray and Dickens chowed down here. Generations of actors, from Buster Keaton to Larry Olivier, strutted and fretted here. And as everyone knows, George VII, when still Prince of Wales, used to heave his royal tumtum up a secret staircase and romance Lily Langtry.
Enough of the history, I hear you cry. But dear reader, Rules is a phenomenon because of the history. Walk into the hushed, plushy, murmurous interior and it wallops you in the face. A texture of English hedonism and yeoman greed, green-room gossip and nursery puddings, Jorrocks and JB Priestley. This place is as English as treason – authentic Englishness, not some Downton Abbey version.
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/
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