Take care of yourself if you’re a partridge; the season opened in the UK yesterday. Parliament reconvenes next week and those London clubs that take a summer holiday have re-opened. I was a guest at Boodle’s which has pretty much everything you could ask for.
It is the second oldest London club (after White’s), founded in 1762, and moved into its current premises on St James’s Street twenty years later. It is a beautiful building, it has perhaps the best food of any London club, amusing members, agreeable staff, an annexe in which to take lady guests, a terrace for smoking and its own gin. That ticks a lot of boxes.
A small digression but still on the subject of London clubs: Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Pratt’s and White’s are all called after the servants who started them. Edward Boodle was the head waiter; William Brooks paid to build his eponymous club as a commercial venture that paid off; William Pratt was steward to the Duke of Beaufort in whose house the club started and where it still is, though now owned by the Duke of Devonshire; White’s gains its name from Francesco Bianco who started it as a shop selling hot chocolate.
It is fair to say that these establishments are a little old-fashioned in matters like admitting ladies as members. But they do in certain respects move with the times. In World War II Boodle’s installed a wireless in a small room on the first floor where members could keep abreast of events. It is still known as the Radio Room, although there is no longer a radio. Downstairs in the bar a large flat-screen television has recently been installed in a prominent position. It is in a gilt frame to try and persuade more old-fashioned members that it is not a bit of modern paraphernalia. Frankly it looks ridiculous and my bet is that if it lasts it will be conditional upon it being kept switched off. Meanwhile my club has only installed a new lift this year.