In the summer of 2024, I launched the Clubland Substack. This presents subscribers with a regular newsletter on a wide variety of aspects of private members’ clubs.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.
Guides to clubs by region
Bangalore, India | Buenos Aires, Argentina | Chile | China | Colombo, Sri Lanka | Delhi, India | Eastern Europe | Edinburgh, UK | Havana, Cuba 🎞️| India [lecture] 🎞️ | Islands of the Pacific | Lagos, Nigeria | Lisbon, Portugal | London, UK | Madrid, Spain | Nairobi, Kenya | New York, USA - Part 1: Upper East Side Manhattan; Part 2: Midtown Manhattan; Part 3: Downtown and Lower Manhattan | Paris, France | Porto, Portugal | Romandy, Switzerland | San Francisco, USA | Seville, Spain | Singapore | Tokyo, Japan | Toronto, Canada | Vancouver, Canada | Vienna, Austria | Washington DC, USA
Historical spotlights
14th October 1940: The night the Carlton Club was bombed | The 1990 IRA bombing of the Carlton Club | The “Aristocratic embrace”? The Labour Party and London clubs | The clubs of MPs in the UK in the mid-19th century: a database, and some new findings | Did Rhodesia’s Salisbury Club prop up the Ian Smith regime? | From the archives: Inside Annabel’s in 1980 🎞️ | The great smoking controversy at White’s in the 1860s | Harold Macmillan’s first Carlton Lecture (1982) 🎞️ | Intoxicating Liquors in Clubs: A debate from the “People’s Budget”, 1909 | Margaret Thatcher’s second Carlton Lecture (1984) 🎞️ | The original 1736 rules of White’s | Petticoat Alley: London’s Forgotten Women’s Clubs 🔒 | Post-Napoleonic clubs | When Westminster took on Clubland’s kitchens | Winston Churchill and His Clubs 🔒 (with update)
Lost clubs
1920 Club (1920-1923) | American Club (1918-1990) | Anglo-German Club/D’Abernon Club (1931-1936) | The former buildings of the Carlton Club (1832-1940) | City Carlton Club (1869-1940) | City Liberal Club (1874-1921) | The former clubhouse of the City University Club (1895-2017) | Constitutional Club (1883-1979) | Crockford’s (1823-1846) | Devonshire Club (1874-1976) | Empress Club (1897-1955) | Junior Athenæum (1864-1931) | Junior Carlton Club (1864-1977) | Junior Constitutional Club (1887-1941) | Junior United Service Club (1827-1953) | The first Ladies’ Carlton Club (1910) | The second Ladies’ Carlton Club (1922-1958) | Naval Club (1919-2021) | New University Club (1864-1938) | Pioneer Club (1892-1939) | St. Stephen’s Club (1870-2012) | Union Club (1799-1964) | United Service Club (1815-1975) | United University Club (1821-1971) | VAD Ladies’ Club, later the New Cavendish Club (1920-2014) | Whitehall Club (1866-1920) | Wig & Pen Club (1946-2003)
Club management
The August Exchange | Club Christmas staff fund appeals | Club legal textbooks | Clubonomics: Could a small club like Blades survive? | Clubs and charity | Curating a reciprocals list | The Do’s and Don’t’s of using reciprocal clubs | “Every club has an opposition” | The “food & beverage trap” in clubs? | The hotel-club: Victorian comeback, or a blight on Clubland? | How club kitchens drive member satisfaction | How membership elections work | Implications of the Garrick Club’s legal advice | “Interview with Matthew Rivett, Secretary of the Oriental Club” | Interviewing candidates for membership 🔒 | Jamie Caring interview | Overseas membership, and how it evolved | The use of AI in private members’ clubs | Vetting candidates for club membership | What is the “right” size for a club?
Club art and architecture
The Athenæum’s architecture and furniture - Tim Gosling 🎞️ | The Cartoon Museum’s exhibition: ‘A Peep into Clubland’ | Clubs in the work of James Gillray | Drawing the clubs of Pall Mall in the 1840s | The Garrick Club’s art collection | George Birch’s 1890s London Clubland photographs | The Illustrated London News’ “In Clubland” pictorials | Max Beerbohm’s ‘Club Types’ cartoons (1892) - Part 1 of 4; Part 2 of 4; Part 3 of 4; Part 4 of 4 | Reynolds’ group portraits for the Society of Dilettanti | Sir Reginald Blomfield - portrait of a club architect | Samuel Bird’s painting of Gladstone at the National Liberal Club - a missing picture | White’s in Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s Progress’ | Wilton Williams’s ‘London Clubs’ cartoons in The Bystander
Clubs in literature
‘Anthony Powell at the Travellers’, by Hugh Massingberd | The Bellona Club and Lord Peter Wimsey | Biggles and the Royal Aero Club | Blades in the James Bond novels | Clubman, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Part 1: George Smiley’s clubs | Clubman, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Part 2: Clubs in the world of George Smiley | “Clubmanship” - Stephen Potter | Clubs in ‘The Flashman Papers’ | The Diogenes Club in the Sherlock Holmes stories | Douglas Sutherland’s ‘The English Gentleman’ | The Junior Ganymede Club in P. G. Wodehouse | The Mystery of Doctor Watson’s Club | Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman | The Reform Club in ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ | The Sheridan Club in ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ | Sherlock Holmes and Clubland 🔊
Clubs in film, television and radio
Top Hat (1935) 🎞️ | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) 🎞️ | Pathé newsreels of the Empress Club (1950-2) 🎞️ | The Man Who Never Was (1956) 🎞️ | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | Sea Wife (1957) | Vertigo (1958) | I’m All Right, Jack (1959) | Alfred Hitchcock Presents - ‘Specialty of the House’ (1959) | Carry On Regardless (1961) | That Touch of Mink (1962) | Dr. No (1962) | Goldfinger (1964) | Members Only (1965) 🎞️ | How to Murder Your Wife (1965) | Round the Horne (1965-8) | The Avengers - ‘A Touch of Brimstone’ (1966) | Casino Royale (1967) | The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) | The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) | Doctor Who - ‘Terror of the Autons’ (1971) | Frenzy (1972) | Barry Lyndon (1975) | Brannigan (1975) | Raffles (1977) | The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (1980-8) | Trading Places (1983) | Around the World with Willy Fog (1984) | Unnatural Causes - ‘Ladies’ Night’ (1986) | Around the World in 80 Days (1989 mini-series) | Around the World in 80 Days (1989 travelogue) | Jeeves & Wooster (1990-3) | Frasier - ‘The Club’ (1995) | Die Another Day (2002) - Part 1; Part 2 | Venus (2006) | Around the World in 80 Days (2021)
Essays and one-off features
Clubbability: What does it mean? | Clubs that are designed for their investors, rather than their members | Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago | Drama at the Delhi Gymkhana Club | Good Chaps: The Rise and Fall of an Idea in Clubland | “Lodging at my club”: Which London clubs have bedrooms? 🔒 | Everything you wanted to know about the Clubland Substack (but were afraid to ask…) | Nigel Farage and clubs | Two years of the Clubland Substack
The Clubland Database
Africa 🔒 | Asia 🔒 | Central America 🔒 | Europe 🔒 | Middle East 🔒 | North America | Oceania 🔒 | South America 🔒
Food & drink in clubs
Clubland White Port | London club cocktail recipes🔒| The mystery of Patum Peperium | Port wine trends across London clubs | Welsh rabbit/Welsh rarebit
Visual guides
Geographia’s pre-World War II maps of Clubland | How have London’s historic clubs adapted to the smoking ban? | London club billiard rooms | London club libraries today | Mapping London’s Clubland
News
Delhi Gymkhana Club ordered to be evicted within 2 weeks | Groucho Club to reopen | The House of St. Barnabas to become the London branch of the Explorers Club of New York | London women’s club AllBright enters administration | Richard Caring sells controlling stake in his London clubs to Abu Dhabi spymaster, in £1.4 billion deal | The sale of Soho House | Soho House Group leadership supports sale of chain
News round-ups
Late September 2026🔒| Early September 2026🔒| Late August 2026🔒| Early August 2026🔒| Late July 2026🔒| Early July 2026🔒| June 2026🔒| Late May 2026🔒| Early May 2026🔒| Late April 2026🔒| Early April 2026🔒| Late March 2026🔒| Early March 2026🔒| Late February 2026🔒| Early February 2026🔒| Late January 2026🔒| Early January 2026🔒| Late December 2025🔒| Early December 2025🔒| Late November 2025🔒| Early November 2025🔒| Late October 2025🔒| Early October 2025🔒| Late September 2025🔒| Early September 2025 🔒 | Late August 2025 🔒 | Early August 2025 🔒 | Late July 2025 🔒 | Early July 2025 🔒 | Late June 2025 🔒 | Early June 2025 🔒 | May 2025 🔒 | April 2025 🔒 | March 2025 | February 2025 | January 2025 | December 2024 | November 2024 | August 2024
Books
London Clubland bibliography | ‘Behind Closed Doors’ audiobook preview 🎞️ | Christmas 2024 reading list | Christmas reading 2025: Clubland fiction | ‘Clubland: The Wrong Side of the Right People’, by Anthony O’Connor | ‘London Clubland’ launched today | New book forthcoming | Updated paperback edition of ‘Behind Closed Doors’ | Where to find scarce club histories
ClubCast: The Clubland Podcast
1: European clubs after Napoleon 🔊 | 2: Blades in Fleming’s James Bond novels 🔊 | 3: 14th October 1940: The night the Carlton Club was bombed 🔊 | 4: The Labour Party & Clubs 🔊 | 5: Interiors of London clubs, with Andrew Jones 🔊 | 6: Did Rhodesia’s Salisbury Club prop up the Ian Smith regime? 🔊 | 7: Ben Schott on Clubland language 🔊 | 8: Philip Palumbo on the Walbrook Club 🔊