14 NOVEMBER 1987, Page 55

Max Hastings

THE secret of happiness when eating alone is to gain possession of a reading stand to hide behind, and only clubs are civilised enough to provide one. In the evening, I hide happily behind a book in Brooks's, alongside a row of other contentedly lonely souls doing likewise. My only claims to literacy are founded upon a career spent

WINE AND FOOD

working through the English novel alone in hotel dining-rooms around the world, and I would not have missed a meal of them. Breakfast is a meal that should always be eaten alone with a book, because there is nothing more disagreeable than a news- paper smeared with marmalade. The Con- naught was once a temple for breakfasting alone, but on my last visit the service was deplorable.