Saturday 30 August 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Clemency Burton-Hill
Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests


The Carlton Club, 1832-2007

A slice off the top

Sir Charles Petrie and Alistair Cooke
obtainable from The Carlton Club, 69 St James’s Street, London SW1A 1PJ, 264pp, £30,
D.R. Thorpe
Wednesday, 13th February 2008

D. R. Thorpe reviews an updated history of The Carlton Club

‘I’m not going to pay good money’, Groucho Marx famously quipped, ‘to join a club that lets in people like me.’ In the case of the Carlton Club on St James’s Street, whose 175th anniversary last year was marked by this handsome history, requirements were quite explicit. Membership depended on opposition to the 1832 Reform Bill. Four years later, the Reform Club demanded the exact opposite. Thus, in their political heyday between the first two Reform Acts, these rival clubs became the effective headquarters of their respective parties, a role altered but not entirely diminished in the Carlton’s case by the foundation of Conservative Central Office in the early 1870s. ‘After 1870’, we read, ‘Central Office got the drudgery; the Carlton kept the glamour and excitement.’

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