14 NOVEMBER 1987, Page 55

Anita Brookner

LONDON'S best-kept secret: Durrant's Hotel. Frequented by the less excitable kind of business man, it is affable, digni- fied, and well-established: Arnold Bennett would have been comfortable here. I don't know what the food is like, because I always eat the same thing, but there appears to be serious meat on one of those silver-domed trolleys. I go there for the service, which is impeccable. The putative discomfort of eating alone in a formal dining-room is banished by the courtesy of the excellent head waiter, Carlos, and his young French assistants. Lunch here is civilised. Re-entry into Baker Street feels like a disaster.