One of the simplest pleasures of pre-lockdown London, and surely one of the most missed, was the ubiquity of a good cup of coffee. Britain is still, by a majority, a nation of tea drinkers — a far more amenable beverage for being stuck at home. But its capital is a coffee city. Before they were closed, fully a third of Londoners visited a coffee shop each day, taking in five million shots of espresso per week.

The number of independent coffee shops in the city has increased tenfold over the past decade — from 50 in 2010 to more than 500 in the city now, according to Jeffrey Young, head of the market research group Allegra Strategies. And their influence has spilled over to the point that coffee is taken seriously almost everywhere.

We grew accustomed to good coffee on train platforms, in sports stadiums and in theatres and museums (putting a price on its importance, in January the Tate advertised a “head of coffee” position with a listed salary of ￡40,000 a year). The coffee in Parliament isn’t too bad and there are several churches in central London where it is exceptional. Recently, I got a quite good single-origin espresso from a cart while visiting Karl Marx’s grave.