There is an evocative scene in The Ice Age, Margaret Drabble’s novel about the 1974 property crash, in which Len Wincobank, a property developer who has been sent to jail for fraud, longingly remembers the marvellous food he used to eat.

Wincobank lies in his prison bunk recalling his favourite meals in the boom of the early 1970s, including meat carved from the trolley at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. The food he gets in the fictional Scratby Open Prison is a poor substitute.