When I first reviewed the Beetle and Wedge in Moulsford, a three-course lunch cost £5.40 and coffee added a further 45p to the bill. Last week, I paid £8.50 just for my starter, and coffee was £3.50, though it did come with a couple of rather toothsome home-made chocolates. You'll be right in thinking there is a significant lapse of time between these two occasions a quarter of a century, to be exact. An instance of how things have changed comes in the first paragraph of my 1981 article where I refer gleefully to "leaving my colleagues pounding their typewriters" remember those? as I set off to laze beside the river.

Then, as now, I liked to lard my reviews where possible with literary allusion. On this occasion I brought in H. G.Wells's delightful comic novel The History of Mr Polly, where the Beetle and Wedge appears, thinly disguised as the Potwell Inn. Polly enjoys "provinder" there, and is said to be "particularly charmed by the ducklings" (not in the same way, I hope, as the pike in my stretch of the Thames at present, which are greedily scoffing the poor little blighters as they appear from their shells).

When I returned to review in 1995 seven years into Kate and Richard Smith's much-lauded period of ownership I had a couple more names to flourish, those of Kenneth Grahame and Jerome K.Jerome. The first link was perhaps rather tenuous, for I could manage no better than that Grahame had immortalised this stretch of the river in The Wind in the Willows. Jerome was much better, for the author of the scarcely less famous Three Men in a Boat actually lived at the Beetle and Wedge just as someone is going to again, now that the Smiths have sold the hotel (and indeed the Boathouse, as I'll explain presently).

Now I can can manage the name of a fourth author something of a coup this one, I think, for I can find no other reference (on the internet or elsewhere) linking John Galsworthy with Moulsford. But reading The Forsyte Saga on a recent holiday, I came across a delightful portrait of the Beetle and Wedge, which he calls the Pouter Pigeon and places in the charge of the Forsytes' old butler, Warmson. Space prevents lengthy quotation, but a few sentences give the flavour: "The Pouter Pigeon stood back a little from the river Thames, on the Berkshire side, above an old-fashioned garden of roses, stocks, gillyflowers, poppies, phlox drummondi, and sweet-williams. In the warm June weather the scents from that garden and from sweetbriar round the windows drifted into an old brick house painted cream-colour. To young Anne Forsyte all was 'just too lovely'. Never in her short life, confined to a large country, had she come across such defiant cosinessthe lush peace of the river, the songs of birds, the scents of flowers, the rustic arbour, the drifting lazy sky, now blue, now white, the friendly fat spaniel, and the feeling that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would for ever be the same as yesterday."

Lovely, isn't it? capturing an atmosphere that can still be enjoyed today in the Boathouse Restaurant. The Smiths sold this last year, ahead of the hotel; it now functions as a separate business run by Stephanie Hicks and her partner Warren Muskin in the same very successful fashion and with most of the same staff as the former owners. It is perfect for special occasions which is what our visit last Wednesday was, being Rosemarie's birthday.

We were delighted that her mother, Olive, was able to share the occasion with us. I had asked, when I'd booked, for a table overlooking the river, and I was pleased to find on arrival that this is what we had in a new (to us) section of the building that used to be an open terrace.

Two menus were presented, one a set menu called the Basic Beetle (£22.50 for three courses), which happened to contain dishes just to my companions' taste. I selected from the regular menu, which features 25 dishes (most in a European tradition) priced between £5.25 (the creamy mushroom soup) to £19.25 (seared scallops). Some are available as either a starter or a main course or, I should say, in either a small (cheaper) or large (more expensive) portion, since the 'starter' and 'main course' divisions are not acknowledged.

I began with one of the four dishes from the Limited Edition section of the menu: squid and bacon with balsamic vinegar and rocket salad (costing the aforementioned £8.50). There were two good-sized tubes of squid, cooked to perfect tenderness on the chargrill (with deep incisions along their length so they kept their shape during the cooking) and fat-free chunks of excellent bacon. It was a good job they were fat-free, since squid are very high in cholesterol and can only be a rare treat for me these days.

Birthday girl enjoyed a thick slice of potted veal with ham, which featured discrete chunks of the meat in a well-flavoured jelly, while her mother feasted on some of the first of the summer's asparagus, simply served with soft-boiled eggs.

My main course was styled a "panache" of sea-bass, halibut and salmon (£18.50). There were small-ish pieces of each fish, pan-fried and prettily arranged over a fresh tomato risotto with saffron sauce. While this was much enjoyed I could not help pondering how much better value Rosemarie's main course was being rather larger pieces of the halibut and salmon, with tomato salsa and black olives.

Olive's pan-fried calves liver two large pieces, beautifully pink was a good deal too. (And, please, spare me any letters following the correspondence in The Daily Telegraph alleging that 'pan fried' is a tautology; it is not.) She finished with a super apple pie with a base of filo pastry and a dollop of rum and raisin ice cream.

I fancied the Basic Beetle's pud of sliced mango and pineapple, with mango sorbet, so took that option, allowing Rosemarie to gorge herself on profiteroles stuffed with vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate sauce (£5.75).

We shared a bottle of herby New Zealand sauvignon blanc (Westbrook, £19.50). Pleasant as it was, it was not a patch on the vintage fizz Olive generously supplied when we reached home. I do like birthdays!