Members-only clubs are dotted around London. Many are generalist (like the Groucho Club.); others orientate towards a certain trade of particular political persuasion. Political clubs, like the Reform Club (leaning towards the Conservative party) or the Commonwealth Club (where Tony Blair sometimes props up at), mostly pay cursory strictness to political ideology.
Although most clubs are open to any person who can afford the price and is regarded as being “of the right sort,” the term “gentleman’s club” remains in common, and sometimes pejorative, use. A gentlemen’s club was a members-only private club originally set up by and for British upper class men in the 18th century.
Women are quite rightly allowed these days; however, membership fees of around £1,000 ($1,600) and the need to be recommended by a fellow member mean that most of the populace are excluded whether they wish to join or not.
One such hallowed institution is the National Liberal Club.
Before peering deeper inside a note about political terminology is required. The Liberal Party is one of the oldest political parties in the U.K. (although it currently goes by the name ‘Liberal Democrat Party’). For over 100 years, and throughout the the Victorian era, the Liberal and Conservative Parties were in and out of government. Both supported the elite; the key difference being the Liberal Party was a proponent of free trade and the Conservative Party one of protectionism.
Later, with the imaginary threat of Bolshevism and the real threat of the Labour Party, the Liberal Party championed piecemeal reforms relating to a proto-welfare state and pensions. This wasn’t enough and the party faded during the 1920s. Its free market economic ideas, however, lived on to the extent that Margaret Thatcher was espoused the necoclassical economic ideas of the nineteenth century liberals that she did of the Tories. The term “liberal” has a somewhat different meaning in European politics than it does in the North American sphere, where “liberal” would be close to “Labour” (at least in the Blair / Brown years; Corbyn has taken the party on a more satisfactory leftward direction.)
Enough of the politics. The National Liberal Club was established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882. The club was founded to promote the Liberal Party and its aims and values. Gladstone served as Prime Minister four separate times (1868–74, 1880–85, February–July 1886 and 1892–94).
The club is an impressive neo-Gothic building. The structure was designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse.
The central staircase is particularly ornate.
Including when viewed from below:
Inside, many of the wall features are ornate.
The walls are lined with plaques and carvings, some celebrating benefactors of the club.
The club contains dozens of rooms, some named after liberal figures of yesteryear.
Perhaps the most famous is the room named after David Lloyd George. Lloyd George was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state.
One called the ‘Grill Room’, Lloyd George made extensive use of the room, including when he hosted a dinner there in 1905 to mark Winston Churchill’s defection to the Liberal Party (Churchill later defected back to the Conservative Party.)
The building is located over the Embankment of the river Thames, at 1 Whitehall place.
Over the years, more famous members ave included Rupert Brooke, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, Dylan Thomas, H. G. Wells and Leonard Woolf. Some pictures of former members line the walls.
Inside is a a dining room, a bar, function rooms, a billiards room, a smoking room, and a library.
The so-called “smoking room” (where smoking is no longer permitted) is particularly impressive.
Interestingly, the club was the first London building to incorporate a lift, and the first to be entirely lit throughout by electric lighting in 1887.
The club has featured in several movies, including Savage Messiah, Zeppelin, The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, The Man Who Haunted Himself, and Casino Royale.
The club bar serves a drink called a Liberal Martini. It is made up of Bourbon Whisky, Sweet Vermouth, Pico a l`Orange, Orange Bitter. The bar was once praised by former U.S. President George Bush Sr as making “The best martinis in the world.”
The place has an air of mustiness: old school glam and lingering patriarchy. It carries an air of the past, of a time out-of-step with modern ideas and sensibilities. This may be because it reflects a world alien to this journalist; out-of-reach and yet strangely fascinating.
