I was back in London on Friday for my annual lunch with several former colleagues.
We’ve been meeting for five or six years at the Reform Club where one of our number was, until last year, a member.
He decided however that because he lives outside London and rarely visits the club any more he could no longer justify the annual four-figure subscription, so we met instead at a restaurant in Covent Garden.
As it happens, I once considered joining the Reform Club myself. You have to be nominated by a member but the process is not as difficult as it is for some of the more elite clubs so I was fairly confident I would be accepted.
However, while the idea of having a bolthole in London, and somewhere to take friends and colleagues for dinner, appeals to me, I too live outside London so the opportunity to make full use of the place would be equally limited, and disproportionately expensive.
Founded in 1836, the Reform Club was conceived as a home ‘for those committed to progressive political ideas, with its membership initially consisting of Radicals and Whigs’. Today it has no association with any political party and ‘serves a purely social function’.
Another club I once considered joining was the National Liberal Club. As its name suggests, it too was founded on politics but compared to the Reform it’s a relative newcomer, having been established in 1882.
Thirty years ago I organised quite a few events at the club, and - at the invitation of a member I knew - I had dinner there several times, so I got to know the place quite well.
Of special interest to me was a portrait of Churchill by Ernest Townsend (1880-1944). According to Wikipedia:
Townsend's 1915 portrait of the Right Hon. Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty was commissioned anonymously. This picture now hangs in the National Liberal Club in London, but it was not hung until 1944. Churchill had been unavailable to unveil it in 1915, and when he was available, he was no longer popular in the Liberal Club. The portrait was mothballed and retrieved for public viewing only following Churchill's success in 1944, when he was belatedly asked to unveil it.
The entry adds that:
When Townsend died in 1944, some said it was due to overwork. He had been busy during the war creating designs that could be used to camouflage Rolls-Royce's aircraft engine factories in Derby. These factories built the Merlin engines that powered the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. Using his skills, he made the factory appear from the air to be no more than a village.
The reason it interested me is because I am distantly related to Ernest Townsend who was, I think, my grandmother’s father’s brother (ie her uncle).
Another club I’ve visited many times as a guest is the Carlton Club. Founded in 1832 as ‘the original home of the Conservative Party’, it describes itself as ‘one of London’s foremost members-only clubs’.
The late Lord Harris of High Cross, chairman of Forest from 1987 to 2006, was, if I remember, a member, as was Russell Lewis, one of our non-executive directors, who died two years ago.
There was a party at the Carlton to mark Russell’s 90th birthday, and last year, following his death in 2022 at the age of 95, the club was the venue for a memorial event where the principal guest speaker was the former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lamont.
Other clubs I’ve visited or had dealings with over the years include the Oxford and Cambridge Club (founded in 1838), the East India Club (1849), and the Royal Over-Seas League (1910).
The one I would find it hard if not impossible to resist - should an invitation to join ever be forthcoming - is the Athenaeum (founded in 1824). Overlooking Waterloo Place, a wide open square ‘awash with statues and monuments that honour heroes and statesmen of the British Empire’, it’s arguably the most beautiful private members’ club in London, and certainly one of the most elite.
Some of the rules are (or were) a bit archaic but, as an occasional guest, I didn’t mind that. The problem was that to be offered membership you had to be nominated by two members and I only knew one.
If I remember correctly, a further 20 members were required to support your nomination, which was then considered by a membership committee.
Furthermore, prospective members are expected to have some kind of distinction in science, engineering, literature or the arts, so that rules me out!
But here’s the thing. Whilst I enjoy the thought of belonging to a private members’ club, the reality can be less appealing.
Aside from the cost, some clubs (I won’t name them) are showing their age and need refurbishment. Facilities can be limited and the food is often unimaginative and bang average compared to a good restaurant.
If they are to survive, many also need an injection of younger members. I believe the Reform Club tried to address this issue by offering reduced subscription rates to younger people, but how successful that has been I don’t know.
The portrayal of certain clubs as bastions of old-fashioned misogyny probably hasn’t helped, but there’s more to the decline of the traditional private members’ club than that.
Truth is, what were once known as gentlemen’s clubs peaked in the late Victorian era when there were 400 clubs in London alone.
Today, only a fraction survive, and they face competition from other private members’ clubs including the likes of Soho House (founded in 1995) and the Groucho Club, which was founded 100 years earlier (in 1895) ‘as an antidote to the stuffy gentlemen's clubs’.
In fact, when Forest had an office in Soho I considered joining one of the smaller clubs.
One was in an old, rather Dickensian, building in Greek Street, a short walk from the Groucho. On the top floor, which could only be reached by climbing a steep and rickety flight of stairs, was a web design agency where I sometimes went for meetings.
The club was on the ground floor and was little more than a restaurant, although I think it was also used for meetings and other private events.
Another was in the basement of a building where it occupied a couple of small rooms where members could pop in for lunch or dinner, with the occasional private event thrown in to justify the cost of membership.
The informal, rather bohemian, nature of such places was in stark contrast to the gentlemen’s clubs around Pall Mall and St James, but despite being encouraged to apply for membership I never got round to it.
In truth, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not very clubbable. Or, to quote Groucho Marx, I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
PS. There are more dedicated books on the subject, but author and journalist Pete Brown talks about gentlemen’s clubs in his excellent book Clubland: How the working men’s club shaped Britain, which I wrote about here.
Part of their appeal in the 19th century was that gentlemen’s clubs were the only places where it was legal to gamble. Today, other than networking opportunities (which are probably exaggerated), their function is largely social, but I would be sad to see their further demise.