The Reform Club

Day 5,267, 22:11 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by certacito


The Reform Club is a private members' club on the south side of Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it comprised an all-male membership for decades, but it was one of the first all-male clubs to change its rules to include the admission of women on equal terms in 1981. Since its founding in 1836, the Reform Club has been the traditional home for those committed to progressive political ideas, with its membership initially consisting of Radicals and Whigs. However, it is no longer associated with any particular political party, and it now serves a purely social function.



The Reform was known for the quality of its cuisine, its first chef being Alexis Soyer, the first celebrity chef. It continues to offer meals in its dining room, known as the 'Coffee Room'.



Appearances in popular culture and literature

The Reform Club appears in Anthony Trollope's novel Phineas Finn (1867). This eponymous main character becomes a member of the club and there acquaints Liberal members of the House of Commons, who arrange to get him elected to an Irish parliamentary 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.



The club also appears in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (published in 1872, as a novel in 1873); 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.[citation needed]

Michael Palin, following his fictional predecessor, also began his televised journey around the world in 80 days in the Saloon of the Reform Club, London, 25th September 1988.

At the time, the Reform Club, like other London clubs since the 1950s, went through a phase of stipulating a dress code requiring gentlemen to wear a jacket and tie; Palin had not packed a tie, and 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 Reform Club in London appears in two James Bond films: Die Another Day in 2002 and Quantum of Solace in 2008.


In Die Another Day (2002) the Reform Club doubles as 'Blades', a fencing club where James Bond meets villain Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike). The scene starts with a fencing class, overseen by fencing teacher Verity (played by Madonna). This part is filmed at the Pinewood Studios. Bond enters the room and meets Verity and Graves challenges Bond to a fencing duel. Bond and Graves play an intense fencing and sword fight game, which leads out of the practice room into other parts of the club. Some scenes on the first floor (with red carpet and large columns) were filmed at the Reform Club. The outside fighting scene around the fountain is in a studio again. When Bond and Graves settle up downstairs, we're once again inside the Reform Club, at the main hall, just behind the entrance of the club.



The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), The Avengers (199😎, Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Quantum of Solace ( 2008 ),




Sherlock Holmes ( 2009 ), Paddington (2014) and Christopher Nolan's Tenet (2020). It has also been used as the lobby of the Dolphin Hotel in the film adaptation of Stephen King's short story "1408."

In Men In Black, The Reform Club is the location where Agent H gets into a scrap with the shady aliens:



In the 1982 BBC television adaptation of Smiley's People, based on the Cold War spy thriller by John le Carré, the titular character visits the Reform Club at the start of the third episode, spending an extended period of time in the club's library. In this episode we see Smiley park his car in Horse Guards Parade and set off on foot towards The Mall. From there we can guess that he heads towards Waterloo Place, before turning left on to Pall Mall. The Reform Club, which is a private members' club, is less than a 100 yards up on the left hand side.



The Reform Club was used as a meeting place for MI6 operatives in Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 83ff of Graham Greene's spy novel The Human Factor (1978, Avon Books, ISBN 0-380-41491-0). Greene also sets a lunch between the protagonist, Jim Baxter, and his biological father, who is a member, in the Reform Club in his final novel, The Captain and the Enemy.

The club was also used in the current Netflix televised series Bridgerton as a Gentleman’s Club location for meetings between the Duke of Hastings and Lord Bridgerton.