Is a soul the only thing unavailable in Harrods?

The Harrods bookshop, which I browse for masochistic reasons, is mesmerising: an homage to the lure of ownership. The first book I find is called, simply, 150 Houses. Is that enough? Then I find Luxury Trains, the Porsche Book, the Lamborghini Book and the Jaguar Book. Then I find a book designed for a lifelong self-guided tour of the world of James Bond, who is a fictional British civil servant. Then I find books called Dior, Balmain, Prada and Gucci. I didn’t know they did words. I want to tell you that the Harrods bookshop is entirely advertorial for the life I can’t afford, but that would be unfair. Because I also find a copy of Mansfield Park in the same colours as a Minion: custard yellow and bright blue. Harrods is very weird and excitable, and it’s owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.

After laughing at the bookshop – the intellectual snob’s chosen, and ineffectual, snap of resentment – we eat in the Harrods Dining Hall, a pale, tiled, sumptuous Art Deco room in the old fish and meat hall. It is next to the surviving Food Hall, which, despite its palatial fittings, has the same air of raging covetousness that inner London supermarkets had during Covid, when people beat each other for raw chicken because they are insane.

The Dining Hall has many restaurants: Hot Dogs by Three Darlings; Kinoya Ramen Bar; Sushi by MASA, a chef so famous he is owed capitalisation; The Grill; Pasta Evangelists by Perbellini; Dim Sung by China Tang; Kerridge’s Fish & Chips. They sit inside preening Edwardiana, which suits them: decor from the last time such inequality stalked the land. The ceiling is particularly lovely: a tile tableau of geese, medieval would-be Harrods shoppers and a pelican.