“Today, I pinch myself,” says Sir George Iacobescu shortly after we take our seats in the leafy garden of the Arts Club, a stately townhouse in London’s Mayfair, tucked between the Ritz and Berkeley Square.

It’s not difficult to imagine why the businessman and chair of Canary Wharf Group feels that his life is like a dream. Iacobescu grew up in communist Romania in the decades after the second world war. Conditions were so dire that when his mother-in-law needed a cancer operation, the family removed the only lightbulb from their home and sent it with her to the hospital so that the surgeons would have enough light to operate.

Now, the 78-year-old sits across from me at his favourite corner table on the terrace, wearing a long orange scarf atop his blue jacket and sweater. The patio heater beats down on his tanned face as he decides between tagliatelle with truffles and the lamb chops. “It is my table when there is nobody else at it,” he jokes. Even in January, he prefers “the feeling of freedom” in the garden.