The British Academy has sent a letter to the Queen to answer her question as to why nobody saw the financial crisis coming. “Many people did foresee the crisis,” says the letter.

“However, the exact form that it would take and the timing of its onset and ferocity were foreseen by nobody.” Particularly not the Bank of England's Tim Besley, who co-authored the letter. He voted for interest rates to go up in July and August last year even though the recession was already well under way.

“So in summary, Your Majesty,” the letter goes on, “the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”

And presumably many more who are not so bright. The royal letter also refers to “financial wizards” who thought their “new and clever ways of managing risks” had “virtually removed” these risks. “It is difficult to recall a greater example of wishful thinking combined with hubris,” the Queen is told.

Apart, perhaps, from her Prime Minister who claimed to have abolished boom and bust.

One Tory doesn't love Google

Tory backbencher and civil liberties campaigner David Davis — and one-time leadership rival to David Cameron — says in a piece for The Times: “I wouldn't trust Google with my personal info. My party would be mad to give control of sensitive records to an internet giant notorious for ignoring privacy concerns.”

Davis presumably knows full well that Cameron's top adviser Steve Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, Google's global public relations chief. Indeed, keep a close eye on the internet search giant's close relationship with the Tories — Dave and shadow chancellor George Osborne have both attended the Google Zeitgeist in Hertfordshire in previous years — when the Cameroons take over in Downing Street …

* The decision of former Brixton boss Tim Wheeler to take his old company to industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal is intriguing. He's gone and hired Farrer & Co, best known as the Queen's solicitors and not a firm normally associated with the Central London Employment Tribunal. When Wheeler was shown the door at Brixton back in March he was earning well over £500,000 a year, basic, with benefits on top. At the tribunal the most he can win is £66,200, so what's his game? The likelihood is that he is using the tribunal as a way of gaining evidence which he can then rely upon in a subsequent action for damages.

* WHEELER'S move raises the prospect of Lady Patten, Brixton's chairman who forced Wheeler out, appearing at the tribunal. At the time, the market was led to believe his departure was down to a desire to pacify investors who were unhappy about his performance ahead of an emergency rights issue. But that share issue never materialised, which begs the question: what really went on in the Brixton boardroom?

Marco's lunch is crunched

THERE'S been plenty of publicity over Gordon Ramsay's recession-forced restaurant closures, but he's not the only chef to be crunched. Marco Pierre White's joint venture restaurant with Roman Abramovich — Marco, at Stamford Bridge — is currently open for dinner only (but promises “we will open for lunch if you wish to book a large group”). And now it is closing entirely from this week until 11 August. Summer holidays or trouble ahead?

* RESULTS from Fleming Family and Partners show just how bad the last year has been for even some of the City's most venerable institutions. Chairman Adam Fleming opens his statement for the 2008-09 results with the words: “Last year was a terrible one in general but in particular for those involved in the world of finance.” Well might he record his gloom. The wealth management arm of the Fleming family went from an £11.8 million pre-tax profit to a £957,000 loss and has had to take an axe to costs, stripping out £5 million in the first quarter. Not that the firm is likely to be in difficulty — aside from the hugely rich Flemings, its shareholders include billionaire Wafic Said and Standard Chartered bank.

* SPARE a thought for investigators into alleged fraudster Allen Stanford's case. The US federal prosecutors are being forced to tackle what may be one of the trickiest jigsaw puzzles in history: re-assembling three bin bags full of Stanford's shredded documents.

* ROGER Bootle, economic adviser to Deloitte is slurping alphabet soup. “It has been popular to characterise the likely shape of the recovery by different letters and we have heard arguments for U, V, W, square roots and even angled square root shaped recoveries,” he says. “Overall the shape of the recovery is best described as U-shaped... but whatever the letter, a return to normal, let alone strong condition, in the UK economy, remains a long way off.”

* WITH the fuss over Silverstone's future as the venue for the British Grand Prix, spare a thought for what Jonathan Palmer, the medic-turned Formula One driver has achieved at rival Brands Hatch. In the midst of a severe recession, Palmer's MSV group, which owns Brands Hatch and three other circuits, pushed up its profit to a record £6.1 million on £41.1 million turnover last year. With worries over Donington Park being ready as an alternative venue for the British Grand Prix, has the time now come for Brands Hatch to throw its hat in the ring?