The Strand has many of the ingredients of a great London street: the Savoy Hotel and Somerset House, theatres, churches, universities, the river just behind it and Trafalgar Square at one end.
For years, it also had the atmosphere of somewhere between more interesting places. It is a road of handsome stonework at first-floor level and disappointing decisions below it, where convenience shops, luggage, fast food and interchangeable restaurants have served a passing population without giving many of them a reason to stop.
