The Diogenes Club
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The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentleman's club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, most notably "The Greek Interpreter". It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic (although this is never expanded upon in the original stories) and was co-founded by Sherlock's indolent older brother, Mycroft Holmes.
The club is described by Sherlock Holmes in the stories thus:
There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.
It is described as a place where men can go to read without any distractions, and as such the number one rule is that there is no talking, to the point where club members can be excluded for coughing.
[edit] Relation to British Secret Service
Although there is no hint in the original Sherlock Holmes Canon that the Diogenes Club is anything but what it seems to be, several later writers have developed and made use of the idea that the club was founded as a front for the British secret service. Although the club itself is not referred to in such a way in the original stories, this common supposition may have its root in the fact that Mycroft Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", is revealed to be the supreme and indispensable braintrust behind the British government, who pieces together the collective government secrets and then advises the best course of action. Given that Mycroft Holmes is established both as a co-founder of the club, and an indolent man who almost exclusively travels only between his home, his office, and the Club, this extrapolation would appear to be a logical one.
This idea was largely popularized by The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a 1970s motion picture directed by Billy Wilder. Although frequently used in pastiches of Conan Doyle's original stories, this idea has been extensively explored by British fantasy writer Kim Newman, who has written a series of stories chronicling the activities of various agents of the Club (described in his stories as "an institution that quietly existed to cope with matters beyond the purview of regular police and intelligence services") throughout the 20th century, particularly in the 1920s, 1940s and 1970s. In Newman's stories, the cases investigated by the Club are generally paranormal or occult in nature. A collection of Newman's stories is The Man from the Diogenes Club, featuring the 1970s agent Richard Jeperson. The Diogenes Club is also featured in his Anno Dracula series.
The club, and its connection to the secret service, was featured in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire, a Doctor Who/Sherlock Holmes crossover novel, which also refers to one of Newman's characters.
The club also appears in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels, the computer game Sherlock Holmes - Case of the Rose Tattoo and in the short story "Closing Time" from Neil Gaiman's collection of short fiction Fragile Things.
