The Gentlemen's Clubs of London

Anthony Lejeune. Photographs by Malcolm Lewis.

Bracken Books. London. 1984. First published in 1979. Hardback, quarto; black cloth-bound boards, dust jacket. 296 pages. Over 400 colour and b&w photographs. English. 305 x 225mm. 1.65kg. 9780946495146. Very good, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear, price-clipped.

An evocative book examining and celebrating the Gentlemen's Clubs of London, their buildings and their traditions. 'Clubland is another country, redolent of the past, but, for its few thousand regular inhabitants, still an important part of their daily lives; a place occupied simultaneously by highly conventional  people and wildly eccentric ones; a place both luxurious and shabby, full of marvellous possessions and curious bric-a-brac accumulated over three centuries; offering splendid wine and indifferent food, servants of a kind which hardly exist elsewhere, ducal architecture and primitive equipment.' (from the blurb). Nearly 50 clubs are described and illustrated in the book, with photographs, archival material and anecdotes. Several are no longer around. A perfect gift for any member of a London Club.