The man whose portrait they painted

• A Life with Food by Peter Langan and Brian Sewell
  Bloomsbury, 128 pp, £16.99, May 1990, ISBN 0 7475 0220 X

From David Hockney’s Lord of Misrule to its repetition on the back of the jacket, this book is a bull shot, like the cocktail at the bar in Langan’s Brasserie. It consists of Langan’s self-portrait, written in the sleepless marches, to which the art critic Brian Sewell has contributed a memoir of friendship which will come as a pleasant surprise to readers more accustomed to his inspired Sowerberry in the columns of the Evening Standard. Last month on his birthday Peter’s wake was celebrated by hundreds in what is still the most successful London restaurant of our times.