“When I phoned the Devonshire Brasserie at Bolton Abbey to book a table I was told that, while the full menu would be available, they would be serving in the bar rather than the dining room. Having seen the dining room I can only describe that as a blessing. It is a square box, the wallpaper fluttering with kitsch butterflies. I’d describe it as the kind of room in which you’d give the kids their high tea at the sort of hotel frequented by the fading English gentry who don’t much like their own children ? were it not for the chairs: blood red and chromium studded, as if they were bought in a fire sale from a brothel. You would have to pay me to sit in there. Actually, to be fair, in this job, I would have been paid to sit in there, but you get my point. It is a master class in the finer points of wrong.
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