Book talk: Behind Closed Doors

About This Event

Dr Seth Thévoz is an award-winning historian and journalist, who holds degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, London and Warwick, and is a former research associate of the History of Parliament Trust and Nuffield College, Oxford. His book Club Government was shortlisted in 2019 for the Whitfield Prize for the best history book by a first-time solo author; and he was part of the team which won a British Journalism Award in 2022. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been rumoured to contribute to Private Eye in some capacity or another.

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thévoz tells the fascinating and entertaining story of the rise, decline and resurgence of London’s private members’ clubs, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day. In doing so he looks at cultural and political developments beyond the clubs, revealing how while the clubs may have been products of their city and country, they also exerted significant influence on London, Britain and places far beyond.

This is a chronicle, as informative as it is entertaining, of the ups and downs of London clubland, and how it had an impact on parts of the world far from London. It is packed with amusing anecdotes and illustrative examples of the growth of this quirky, unique institution, which grew to spread around the world. London, though, with its four hundred clubs, was always at its heart.

Thévoz reveals how everything we might have thought we knew about these clubs is wrong. They may have started out as white, male, aristocratic watering holes – but that’s only part of the story. All sections of society built their own clubs and lived their lives there: highbrow and lowbrow; women and men; working-class, middle-class and upper-class; international and British. The club has been central to a distinctively British form of leisure over more than three centuries.

Behind Closed Doors is a distillation of a decade of research and writing on London clubs, based on exclusive behind-the-scenes access to archives and proceedings, as well as a love of gossip and scandal.

Ticket includes a glass of wine after the event.

The talk is open to ROSL members and their named guests only.

This talk will not be live streamed or recorded.