SOURCE: "He Knows a Little Place," in London Review of Books, Vol. 14, No. 3, February 13, 1992, p. 20.

In the following unfavorable review, Johnson judges Expensive Habits vulgar and notes similarities between it and Mayle's books about Provence.

The contents of this vulgar and irritating book [Expensive Habits]—can the author have deliberately set out to be irritating?—are totally predictable. It is, however, unexpected that we have to wait until page 166 before encountering a familiar example of what some consider to be admirable behaviour. A man leaves a restaurant, naturally a grand and expensive establishment, after paying his bill. The mâitre d'hotel follows him and asks if he has not forgotten something. The diner, heroic in his conviction that the mâitre d'hotel has not done his duty by him, produces a ten-pound note. 'This was for you,' he says. But, instead of handing it over, he produces...