I’ll stick to the soup . . .

JOHN Major’s plain tastes are highlighted in files released by the National Archives.

A proposed menu for the RAF flight taking him to a 1991 Commonwealth conference in Zimbabwe included ‘pate maison’ followed by ‘chicken metropole with Flemish-style peas and Parmentier potatoes’. Mr Major’s private secretary, rates to sustain a high pound value risked creating a recession. She warned him against repeating a ‘historic error’ committed by Winston Churchill Stephen Wall, asked if he regarded any of the choices as ‘edible’, writing: ‘If not, if you could jot down three or four main courses you would like I will get the RAF to lay it on.’

In a typically Majorish reply, the PM noted: ‘As long as there’s soup and cheese and biscuits I’ll be all right.’ who as chancellor in 1925 had fixed the pound at too high a level against the gold standard, crippling the economy and causing deflation and strikes. A