Reform Club

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 the 1960s.)

Related Topics:
Gentlemen's club - Pall Mall - London

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It was founded by Whig members of both Houses of Parliament around the time the Reform Act of 1832 was being debated. It was intended to be a bastion of liberal and progressive thought.

Related Topics:
Whig - Parliament - Reform Act of 1832

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The building, like its neighbour the Travellers Club, was designed by Sir Charles Barry and opened in 1841.

Related Topics:
Travellers Club - Charles Barry

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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.

Related Topics:
Liberal Party - Travellers Club

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Its members have included:

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• 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

It is used fictitiously 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.

Related Topics:
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days

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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.

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Reform Club: See also ►