Earlier this year, Jeanette Winterson wrote on her website that she’d “had enough of the media, enough of journalists, enough of the lot”. So I’m not sure what to expect of the novelist as I watch her wave off her motorbike taxi and rush into Alastair Little, the Soho restaurant.

But as she comes to greet me she is already chatting away, explaining that Nigella Lawson first brought her here years ago, and how she always books the same table – table seven – by the window. Fine food and independent stores make the world a richer place, she tells me: “The corporate world has driven me bonkers. You just don’t want a hundred chain stores and coffee shops.” Winterson is committed enough to spend her own money in support of her beliefs – she owns an independent grocer in Spitalfields, London.