I’ll never forget how, as a sixth-former at the end of the 1980s, I was taken home for tea by some Arab boys in my year. Lured back with offers of snooker on their private table, I got a serious eyeful of their immense pad, a whopping house, bang on The Mall, with views over Green Park. The taps were gold, the rugs silk and beige; two veiled family retainers went out to buy us McDonald’s, which was then served up on silver platters. I was impressed.
But — and I confess to feeling a little schadenfreude about this — the time when any Arab who’d made a mint could buy the whole of Knightsbridge before lunch are long gone. A few Qataris might manage