Chary of the summer shop

The region’s rich are certainly getting richer, to the delight of the purveyors of luxury goods. As the jewelers of Paris and the watchmakers of Geneva will testify, the influx of rich Arabs into Western Europe each year turns the summer season into boom time; and the wealthy don’t care too much about the exchange rate of the euro, sterling, or the Swiss franc. London in particular has long been the Mecca, as it were, of Middle East shoppers. However, in the globalized 21st century, if you can’t go to Regent Street, it will come to you — the latest example of this being the launch in Amman of a branch of the up-market UK toy store, Hamleys. Choosing the Jordanian capital for a first- ever outlet outside Europe, Hamleys opened in Amman in mid- June to considerable fanfare. This would have been hard to imagine a decade ago, when