I am currently a freelance writer, journalist, editor, historian and consultant, working on assorted projects in print and in broadcasting, in addition to my own academic research. I recently released my third book, a cultural guide and almanac to London’s “clubland.” Since 2024, I have written a Clubland Substack, combining a newsletter and a resource.

I grew up in several countries, including Australia, France, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland, before settling in Britain. For several years of my childhood I was self-taught rather than in formal education, before I attended my local state comprehensive, Fortismere. I then read my first degree in History and Politics at Clare College, Cambridge (2003-6), before working as a researcher in the House of Commons (2006-7), and at the Leadership Centre (full-time 2007-8; part-time 2008-10), where I worked closely with senior politicians across all main parties. From 2014-21, I returned to the Leadership Centre on a part-time basis as an external contractor, focusing on editing their publications, as well as running several of their leadership mentoring programmes. 

Academia

A couple of years after graduating from Cambridge University, my MA in Modern History was completed at King’s College, London (2008-9), securing the top mark in my year and winning the Jinty Nelson Prize in History for my dissertation, which was on Winston Churchill’s 1922 election defeat at Dundee, and its ramifications for our understanding of British political realignment in the 1920s.

I took a PhD at the University of Warwick on the 19th century political impact of London clubs, supported by a scholarship from the History of Parliament Trust, whilst being jointly supervised by both institutions (2010-4). A reworked version of the thesis was converted into my first book, Club Government, published by I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury in 2018, and shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize for the best history book by a first-time solo author.

I have taught at a range of universities, including Georgetown, London, Oxford and Warwick, as well as at other institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum.

My most recent academic post was as an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford (2015-9), where I was research assistant to Michael Crick on the official biography of the psephologist David Butler. I later also did some research for Crick’s biography of Nigel Farage.

Books

After Club Government (see above), my second book was Behind Closed Doors: The Secret Life of London Private Members’ Clubs (2022), which offered a popular narrative history of London’s clubs, and sought to challenge many of our underlying assumptions about these uniquely strange places. The Financial Times said it was, “The result of thorough research, lightly worn. Thévoz writes with energy, conviction and amusement”, while the Spectator said that it was, “Riveting…despite the vastness of its ambition, Behind Closed Doors serves as a well-researched one-stop introduction to the complex social history of the club.”

More recently, I published London Clubland: A Companion for the Curious (2025), which was described by the Sunday Times as, “Thévoz’s witty guide...a cheerfully eccentric introduction to London clubland...enormously entertaining”, and the Washington Examiner as “an exuberant, suave, and discreetly indiscreet user’s guide to clubland.”

Journalism

Since completion of my doctoral thesis in 2014, my research has focused on two distinct strands - the history of clubs (particularly their global dimension, including their post-colonial legacy) and sociability more generally; and the history of corruption.

I have produced well-received journalistic and academic work in both areas; and alongside my colleagues at openDemocracy (where I was an Investigative Reporter from 2019-23, and part of the investigations unit from 2021-3), my investigative work on “cash-for-peerages” made up part of the winning Press Gazette British Journalism Award in 2022, for “Best Campaign of the Year”, for openDemocracy’s work on standards in public life. The same work had also been shortlisted for the Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Award for “Best Campaign” in 2022; and I had previously been shortlisted alongside openDemocracy colleagues in 2020, for a British Journalism Award for “Best Investigation” around the UK government’s Covid-19 response. I have collaborated on major journalistic exposés with Channel 4 News, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times; and my work has frequently appeared in Private Eye since 2015.

Research

I spent two months of 2019 following the Indian general election on the ground, travelling 3,000 miles within the country, after a stint as research assistant on Prannoy Roy and Dorab R. Sopariwala’s #1 bestseller The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections, published by Penguin India in 2019. More recently, from 2022-4 I was the principal research assistant for Will Hutton, on his bestselling economics book, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain, published by Apollo in 2024.

Podcasting

In recent years, I have done more podcasting with the Podmasters studio, intermittently since 2020; and since 2022 I have been a regular panelist on their current affairs programme Oh God, What Now?, and an interviewer on their daily culture show, The Bunker, as well as providing historical voiceovers for Jam Tomorrow and its sequel, More Jam Tomorrow.

I also have my own independent podcast, ClubCast - The Clubland Podcast, a spin-off of the Clubland Substack.

Other

I am bilingual (my first language was French), and hold dual British and Swiss citizenship, with ancestry from France, Italy, Portugal, Prussia and Switzerland. A devoted Lusophile and admirer of all things Portuguese, I am still struggling to become proficient in the language.

In my spare time, I am a Trustee of the John Stuart Mill Institute; am on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Liberal History; and am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.