Reformed Characters. The Reform Club in History and Literature. An Anthology with Commentary - Hardcover

Russell Burlingham; Roger Billis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0950305332 ISBN 13: 9780950305332

Publisher: Reform Club, 2005

Synopsis

Everyone knows the Reform Club as the scene of the wager that the world could be circumnavigated "In Eighty Days" as described in Jules Verne’s novel; and countless Londoners and tourists have stood outside the Pall Mall façade of Barry’s Grade I listed masterpiece wondering what goes on inside. In a new approach to the arcane world of ‘Clubland’, this book endeavours to conduct readers on a journey into the real Pall Mall landscape. This is neither conventional narrative history nor a mere tally of anecdotes. Instead, it tells the story of the Club’s development through the eyes of its most celebrated occupants. Founded in 1836 as the ‘Central Office’ of the Liberal party, the Reform existed for less than eighty years as a strictly political club, but whilst it did, it was the centre of Liberal and coalition government making and breaking. This book has chapters on the Liberal Prime Ministers, such as Palmerston, Asquith and Lloyd George and the important!
political events in which they participated at the Club, as well as a section on its associations with several American Presidents. The Reform Club has long been a home for famous writers - Thackeray and Henry James, H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett. We see them at work and play: gossiping, quarrelling, scribbling. We encounter also the figures who increasingly come to dominate later generations: the journalists, Whitehall mandarins and the occasional louche or notorious character, such as Guy Burgess. Familiar aspects of this famous institution, such as the magnificence of Barry’s architecture and the global perambulation of Phileas Fogg, are included in liberal measure and devoteès of the murder-mystery genre will also find their appetite well catered for. Moreover, the book contains important new material here published for the first time, for example Churchill’s dramatic resignation when his candidate for membership was blackballed, the full story of Disraeli’s relations with the Reform and its Radical predecessor, the Westminster Club, and an unpublished poem composed in celebration of the Reform by Siegfried Sassoon. The reader is drawn to the inexorable conclusion that no club can boast a history richer or more diverse than that of the Reform.

With a Foreword by Edward Pearce and contributions from
Dame Margaret Booth, D.B.E., Dr Garret FitzGerald,
Professor Wm Roger Louis, C.B.E. (Hon.) and Sir Peter Stothard

Edition details

• Publisher: Reform Club
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0950305332
• ISBN 13: 9780950305332
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278