Before New York City suddenly became a mecca for swanky private members’ clubs (yes, I’m looking at you, San Vicente West Village, Casa Cruz, Chez Margaux, and Maxime’s), there was London. Given the more than 130 such institutions in that city, the Yanks have yet to catch up to their forefathers—and still have much to learn. Perhaps they can start by taking a page or two from Andrew Jones and Laura Hodgson’s The London Club. It’s a delectable tour of 46 clubs that span 300 years of architecture and design.
The book covers the venerable Boodle’s, Brooks’s, and White’s, all on St. James’s Street and dating back to the 18th century (the interior designer Nina Campbell remembers her father frequenting these), as well as Regency institutions, Victorian club buildings, early-20th-century haunts, postwar dens, and modern spots.
Organized alphabetically rather than chronologically, The London Club begins with the Academy—whose motto, “Drinking water, you’ll produce nothing of any use,” might give sober Gen Z pause—and ends with the Upstairs at the Department Store, set atop the former Bon Marché department store.
Most importantly, Jones notes, “this is a book about the way clubs look.” His intent is to capture what one might see if allowed to linger in one of these rooms, cocktail in hand, sunk into a comfy chair. Politics, gender, social standing, and food, he adds, are “perfectly interesting topics but they are not in the scope.”
As for London’s vast and storied clubland—which younger generations may dismiss with a yawn or an eye roll—Campbell argues its appeal is elemental, especially in a city of eight million. After all, she says, everyone has “a desire to belong.” —Carolina de Armas
Carolina de Armas is a Junior Editor at air mail
