Boodle's

Boodle’s

Established: 1762

 

“I like this Club.”

-Winston Churchill

Addresses

1762-1782: 49-51 Pall Mall

From 1782: 28 St. James’s Street, SW1

Entry Restrictions

Men only; from the late 1980s, women can obtain Associate Membership

 

Famous Members

David Hume

Adam Smith

Edward Gibbon

Beau Brummel

William Wilberforce

Laurence Olivier

Lord Cherwell

Winston Churchill (Honorary Member)

Harold MacMillan

Ian Fleming

Skills Augmented:

Accountancy; Animal Husbandry (Biology); Fishing; Ride: Horse; Rifle; Track

 

Areas of Speciality:

Fly-fishing; Fox-hunting; Horse Racing; Coarse Fishing; Pheasant Shooting; Grouse Hunting

 

History

Lord Shelburne – the future Marquess of Lansdowne and Prime Minister - founded this club as think-tank for his political career in 1762. The original address was at 49-51 Pall Mall; in 1782, another club – the Sçavoir Vivre – became defunct and Sherburne’s organisation took over their premises at 28 St. James’s Street. Boodle’s has been there ever since.

The Club has been called Boodle’s since very early days, the name deriving from that of its first head waiter Edwin Boodle. The building was designed by the architect John Crunden in 1775 and the ground floor underwent a refurbishment between the years 1821 and 1834 organised by John Buonarotti Papworth.

Although it started life as a Tory establishment, Boodle’s rapidly shed its political raison d’etre and began accepting members from both sides of the ideological divide. More than anything, Boodle’s is known as a retreat for country gentlemen who need to escape from the pressures of Town whenever business takes them there. Boodle’s is a tweedy, horse-y kind of a place, a retreat for readers of “Country Life” magazine.

Open fires are a theme in the lounges here as are oil paintings of rural scenes and especially of prize-winning horses and other domestic animals. Like White’s, Boodle’s has a grand bow window overlooking the street; one Duke who favoured this position answered, when asked why he liked sitting there, “I like to see the damned people getting wet.”

 

In the last third of last century next-door property development allowed Boodle’s to take advantage of the construction and build a ladies’ lounge. This is a subterranean extension which encroaches onto the neighbouring block and resembles the main bar of a luxury liner. This breaking-down of the “Men Only” prerogative has won Boodle’s many friends amid the younger generations and has bolstered membership through recent financial downturns.

Ian Fleming liked Boodle’s and, in his James Bond books, based M’s fictitious gentlemen’s Club Blades on it. Many of the descriptions of Blades accord well with member’s knowledge of their real life establishment

*****

“‘You know that terrible stuff that Sir Miles always drinks? That Algerian red wine that the wine committee won’t even allow on the wine list. They only have it in the Club to please Sir Miles. Well, he explained to me once that in the Navy they used to call it the Infuriator because if you drank too much of it, it seems it puts you in a rage. Well now, in the ten years that that I’ve had the pleasure of looking after Sir Miles, he’s never ordered more than half a carafe of the stuff.’ Porterfield’s benign, almost priestly countenance assumed an expression of theatrical solemnity as if he had read something really terrible in the tea leaves. ‘Then what happens today?’ Lily clasped her hands tensely and bent her head fractionally closer to get the full impact of the news. ‘The old man says, “Porterfield. A bottle of the Infuriator. You understand? A full bottle!” So of course I didn’t say anything but went off and brought it to him. But you mark my words, Lily,’ he noticed a lifted hand down the long room and moved off, ‘there’s something hit Sir Miles hard this morning and no mistake.’”

- Ian Fleming, The Man with the Golden Gun