Behind Closed Doors

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thevoz 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.

Thevoz 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.

An entertaining glimpse into an anachronistic world Guardian
[A] secretive world of arcane rules, unbelievable anecdotes and disreputable behaviour The Times
A lively and comprehensive study of London clubs ... an entertainingly readable and well-researched glimpse into a world Observer
Thévoz...offers much more than tales of delicious eccentricity, pink gins or popping monocles. He's a serious researcher, and offers a lively, exhaustively comprehensive, soup-to-cigars history of this cosy but often corrupt institution Sunday Times
This well-researched romp through the history of the capital's private members' clubs overturns many myths along the way...Compendious and entertaining, Behind Closed Doors is the result of thorough research, lightly worn. Thévoz writes with energy, conviction and amusement at the ever-changing variety of human congregation and its foibles Financial Times
Exuberant, rollicking...Behind Closed Doors is full of amusing anecdotes and waspish character sketches...Thévoz, who is the librarian of the National Liberal Club, clearly knows at first hand what has been going on behind the "closed doors" of his title Times Literary Supplement
Hugely entertaining and full of stuff I didn't know I wanted to know, but I now do know, and I'm delighted by it -- Jonathan Lynn, co-author of YES, MINISTER and YES, PRIME MINISTER
Thévoz...is clearly a brilliant researcher. He is very good on the history of clubs and the buildings that house them. As for what went on behind those closed doors, there are riveting snippets between great chunks of earnest fact -- Anne de Courcy Daily Telegraph
A fair-minded overview of three hundred years of club history, neatly researched and quite fact-heavy, but overwhelmingly preoccupied with carnal and financial appetites -- Jonathan Parry London Review of Books
An excellent book. -- Alexander Larman
I enjoyed it greatly! It is a remarkable collection of history, anecdote and reference and I'm baffled at how you had any time to eat or sleep whilst researching all the material! -- Michael Meadowcroft, former Liberal Democrats MP
A great read - rich in evidence and robust in analysis. And full of stories told with dry wit -- Dr Matt Cole, University of Birmingham
Seth Alexander Thévoz is a wonderful, impressively well-informed tour guide, leading you past the heavily guarded Porter's Lodge into the vaulted halls of clubland...meticulous...genuinely hilarious Buzz magazine
Equal parts entertaining and intriguing -- Hatchards bookshop, Piccadilly
Admirably broad reach...does a great job of demythologising -- Lesley A. Hall
A splendid new tome The Chap
Utterly fascinating -- Dr Kate Lister, Betwixt the Sheets podcast HistoryHit
It's a very interesting book indeed -- Michael Portillo Times Radio
Highly knowledgeable The Week
Superb -- Peter Oborne Byline Times
Most enjoyable...gave me just exactly the background to the London clubs which I needed -- Malcolm Shifrin, author of Victorian Turkish Baths (2015)
This brilliant book...It is EXTREMELY timely, well told and glorious fun. 10/10 -- Dr Fern Riddell
Very good -- Dr Tim Stanley
Superb...finished it in two evenings...Impressively wide-ranging and deeply analytical -- David Palfreyman, author of London’s Pall Mall Clubs (2019).
Very much enjoying this splendid volume -- Ben Schott
Keen to debunk myths...Startling...Thévoz gleefully punctures the notion that clubs were a male bastion -- Air Mail

Dr Seth Alexander Thevoz 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.

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