The London Times restaurant critic has recently spent a week eating like an Edwardian. It’s all splendid stuff, including this breakfast of champions: “Smoked haddock, scrambled eggs, kippers, cold cuts, one roast pheasant, fruit, bacon, sausages, devilled kidneys, scones and kedgeree.”

But were you allowed seconds?

The article also contains the entertaining detail that Edward VII announced the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, to some friends with the words, “Gentlemen, you may smoke,” an approach that in its delightfully cheery callousness reminded me of Field Marshal von Moltke, a man said to have laughed only twice in his life. The first was when he was told that a certain French fortress was impregnable, and the second was when he heard that his mother-in-law had died.