| Founded | 1836 |
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| Home Page | www.reformclub.com |
| Address | 104 Pall Mall SW1 |
| Clubhouse occupied since | 1841 |
| Club established for | Whig and Liberal society |
The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00. The club enjoys extensive reciprocity with clubs around the world, and attracts significant numbers of foreign members, including diplomats.
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The club was founded in 1836 by Edward Ellice, MP and Whig Whip, whose riches came from the Hudson's Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The new club, for members of both Houses of Parliament, was intended to be a centre for the radical ideas which that Bill represented; a bastion of liberal and progressive thought that became closely associated with the Liberal Party, which largely succeeded the Whigs in the later 19th century.
Brooks's Club, the headquarters of the old Whig aristocracy, was not prepared to open its doors to a flood of new men, so preliminary meetings were held at Ellice's house to plan a much larger club, which would promote "the social intercourse of the reformers of the United Kingdom". When a Liberal Member of Parliament "crossed the floor" to join or work with another party, it was expected he should resign from the club. The Club no longer represents any particular political view, being a purely social venue.
Until the decline of the Liberal Party in the earlier 20th century, it was de rigueur for Liberal MPs and Peers to be members of the Reform Club, being regarded as an unofficial party headquarters. However, the National Liberal Club, formed under William Ewart Gladstone's chairmanship, was established in 1882, designed to be more "inclusive", and was geared more towards Liberal grandees and activists throughout the country.
The Reform Club's building, like the one adjacent that of the Travellers Club (at number 106), was designed by Sir Charles Barry and opened in 1841.[1] The new club was palatial, the design being based on the Farnese Palace in Rome, and its saloon is regarded as the finest room of all London clubs. The Reform was among the first senior London clubs to have bedrooms (known as chambers), and its library contains over 75,000 books, mostly of a political, historical and biographical nature; traditionally, members donate a copy of any book they write to the club's library, ever increasing its stock.
After World War II and with the Liberal Party's decline, the club increasingly drew its membership from civil servants[2] and those from the Treasury in particular, whereas the neighbouring Travellers Club became synonymous with Foreign Office officials.
The club maintains a comprehensive list of guest speakers and musical ensembles throughout the year, for example Nick Clegg and Theresa May in 2011.
Victorian publisher Norman Warne is shown visiting the Reform Club in the 2006 film Miss Potter.
The Reform Club appears in Anthony Trollope's 1867 novel Phineas Finn. The eponymous main character becomes a member of the club and there comes into contact with Liberal members of the House of Commons, who arrange to get him elected to an Irish borough. The book is one of the political novels in the Palliser series, and the political events it describes are a fictionalized account of the build-up to the Second Reform Act (passed in 1867) which effectively extended the franchise to the working classes.
It is used fictionally in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days; the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, 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.
Michael Palin, following his fictional predecessor, also began and ended his televised journey around the world in 80 days at the Reform Club. The Club, like other senior London clubs, has a dress code requiring gentlemen to wear a jacket and tie; Palin preferred to remain casually dressed and, not having prepared himself properly, he was not permitted to enter the building to complete his journey as had been his intention, so his trip ended on the steps outside.
The club has been used as a location in a number of films, including the fencing scene in the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day.[3], "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), "The Man Who Haunted Himself" (1970), Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man!" (1973), "Quantum of Solace" (2008) and "Sherlock Holmes" (2009).
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