Reform Club
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Reform Club (disambiguation).
Image:Reform Club. Upper level of the saloon. From London Interiors (1841).jpg Image:London Reform Club.jpg The Reform Club is a private gentlemen's club situated on the south side of Pall Mall (at number 104), in central London. (It has admitted ladies since 1981.)
It was founded by Whig members of both Houses of Parliament in 1836. It was intended to be a bastion of liberal and progressive thought and became closely associated with the Liberal Party, which largely succeeded the Whigs by the middle of the 19th Century. Thereafter, until the decline of the Liberal Party, it was de rigeur for Liberals to be members of the Reform club, which almost constituted a party headquarters. When a Liberal Member of Parliament "crossed the floor" to join or work with another party, he was expected to resign from the club.
The building, like its neighbour the Travellers Club, was designed by Sir Charles Barry and opened in 1841.
With the decline of the Liberal Party in the mid-20th century, the club increasingly drew its membership from civil servants in the Treasury, as a counterpart to the neighbouring Travellers Club, which became synonymous with Foreign Office officials.
Its members have included:
- Hilaire Belloc
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- E. M. Forster
- Henry James
- Stella Rimington
- William Makepeace Thackeray
- H. G. Wells
- Roy Jenkins
- Jeremy Thorpe (expelled in the 1970s)
- Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, both of whom resigned in 1913 in protest at the blackballing of a friend.
- Guy Burgess
- Sir Henry Irving
- Sir Charles Dilke
- Menzies Campbell
It is used fictionally in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, the protagonist (Phileas Fogg) of which is a member of the Reform Club who sets out to circumnavigate the world on a bet from his fellow members, beginning and ending at the club.
Michael Palin, in imitation of his fictional predecessor, also began and ended his televised journey around the world in eighty days at the Reform Club.