Tanya Gold reviews the Orient-Express

The British Pullman on platform 1 at Victoria station looks mad, because it is 9 a.m. and ugly British commuters are running around, looking wracked and unhappy, like extras from Les Misérables, in slightly uglier clothes. Yet this train, which could have steamed out of Julian Fellowes’s head, sits in a grand puddle of cliché, like a duchess desperately trying not to look as if she is shopping at Lidl: graceful, romantic, a bygone age, the romance of steam, er, Foyle’s War. Its customers, a pile of mother/daughter forgiveness jaunts and happy — or unhappy — couples, are trying to look classy, which isn’t easy at Victoria station on a weekday. They are huddled in a makeshift VIP pen beyond Starbucks, which is made from a velvet rope, a red carpet and a coffee wagon. Chomping staff with happy smiles begin the standard international luxury experience of treating everyone they can grab like babies.