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the non-marine underwriters who considered themselves the arbiters of how things ought to be done. They were proud to have evolved from Lloyd’s’ maritime origins into dry Darwinian sophistication. The world was their oyster, they maintained, ignoring that the briny bivalves were strangers to their element except when served in multiples of six for lunch at Wheeler’s or Sweetings restaurants, and when their pearls were hung around their wives’ necks.
    The common distinction, and it was a common one, made by non-mariners as to the difference between what constituted marine and non-marine business was that if a seagull could shit on it, it belonged downstairs. They mocked their wet counterparts for spending their days poring over bills of lading issued to Turkmenistani rug merchants, and cargo lists of spices being exported from the Azores to satisfy world demand for curried goat. They maintained that sailors were men who still navigated by the stars instead of satellites, and only came onshore to careen barnacles from the wooden hulls of their vessels.
    Occasionally a dry-bones would appear on the ground floor dressed in a pirate’s costume, complete with cocked hat, wig with tarred pigtails and eye-patch, wearing a cutlass and carrying a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. He would hobble about on a crutch with one leg tied behind him, and a pipe filled with ship’s corded plug tobacco clenched between his teeth that he removed to spit and swear timber-shivering oaths.
    The mariners ignored the insults: they were the gentlemen of the market, and considered those upstairs to be as beneath them in character as they were in physical location, publicity hounds who were celebrated for insuring the actress, dancer, and singer Betty Grable’s legs (the issuance of which policy had prompted jokes about invoking the Inspection Clause, and claiming rights of salvage in the event of loss).
    On the ground floor, traditions were upheld. Many marine underwriters still wrote their lines with quill pens; and every day a waiter would solemnly enter with a goose feather in old-fashioned script, in a tome on a lectern, the marine market’s total-losses. Non-marine underwriters were envious of the old ship-insuring Lloyd’s that had inspired a 1936 box office hit for 20th Century Fox in Tyrone Power’s first starring role. Making a film about the Vauxhall car awarded to the winner at a hole-in-one competition did not have the same filmic potential as the Napoleonic wars.
    The more colourful characters in the market had nicknames. It was advisable not to be too close or down-wind of the Ginger Germ, who was a rotund little man with orange hair. And it did not do to get into a queue behind the Suitcase, a lugubrious grey-suited individual who needed a trunk, instead of the customary leather slipcase with button strap, to tote his immense portfolio of small-time business around the Room.
    The Suitcase argued the merits of his business, despite the exiguous premium each contract afforded, exhaustively and took every rejection as a personal affront. His arrival was enough to shut an underwriter down to other business for the day. If a broker tipped off an underwriter that the Suitcase was headed in his direction, he would leg it to The Lamb in Leadenhall Market, and buy that broker a drink the next time he met him in a bar.
    The man known as Afterbirth had a mulberry birthmark on his face; Toffee was a snob with a caramel-freckled face; Frank the Bank was rich; Sprout’s real name was Bert Russell; Pissfroth had curly hair of reddish-yellow hue; A.L.F. was an aggressive little fucker; Bonkers Barker was as per his handle; the Smart Young Man was well dressed; Super-Tramp, a titled landowner, had been wearing the same Guards tie, bespoke suit, and Lobb shoes for so many years that he looked as though he dossed with his lesser brethren under Charing Cross Bridge at night.
    There were a number of animals: the Giraffe was tall with a long neck,