Behind Closed Doors - Hardcover

by Seth Alexander Th騅oz (Author)

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Th騅oz 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.

Th騅oz 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.

Back Jacket

London's Clubland had reached its height in the twenty years leading up to the First World War. Some 400 'elite' clubs were found on or off Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and assorted major clubs were in every Central London district, including Bloomsbury, Holborn, Kensington and Waterloo. Innumerable thousands of working men's clubs dotted the country, and hundreds of 'elite' clubs worldwide consciously imitated the grand clubs of Pall Mall. The pinnacle of London Clubland was the city's largest ever clubhouse, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) ...

Praise for Club Government:

'A fascinating forensic study of the period's networks of power'
Ian Hislop, Private Eye

'Th騅oz has undertaken the most comprehensive and rational analysis of the part clubs played and how they were enabled to do so'
Journal of Liberal History

'Magisterial'
Professor Sunny Singh

Author Biography

Dr Seth Alexander Th騅oz is a freelance historian and journalist. He 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. He has variously been shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize for his first book, Club Government, and a British Journalism Award for his investigative work with openDemocracy. Since 2013, he has been Librarian of the National Liberal Club in London. He has been known to contribute to Private Eye in some capacity or another, allegedly.
http: //www.sethalexanderthevoz.com/