The end-of-month press round-up continues to be a feature for paying subscribers only. If you are enjoying the Clubland Substack, do consider supporting my work as a paying subscriber - it means I can justify setting aside more of my time to bring you more material.
This month’s round-up includes as a free sample some coverage of my new book - but the wider press coverage of Clubland remains for paying members, spanning Australia, New Zealand, the UAE, the USA and the UK. It remains the best way to keep informed about clubs making the news worldwide.
The Times of London was the first newspaper to review my new book, with an upbeat write-up containing plenty of welcome observations:
“Seth Alexander Thévoz’s witty guide...a cheerfully eccentric introduction to London clubland...enormously entertaining...There’s a great deal of practical information here as well.”
But most pleasing is the conclusion, in which The Times’ reviewer, Dr Pratinav Anil, shows that he instinctively grasps why I wrote the book:
“Thévoz makes a persuasive case as to why you should join one. There are many bad reasons to become a member, he says: networking; anxiety to keep up with the Joneses; snobbery. But there are also many sensible ones: intellectual stimulation, romantic liaisons, pantagruelian banquets, beguiling libraries and, above all, friendship. Clubs, Thévoz rightly argues, “speak to a very human need, for stimulation in congenial company”. They are the antidote to that great ailment of our time: loneliness, and its attendant malaises of misanthropy and melancholy. Small wonder clubland is booming.”
Christopher Hope’s ‘Peterborough’ column in the Daily Telegraph picked up on my book’s list of prime ministerial club memberships - though got some of the details muddled, confusing my list of who had been a member of which clubs for who is still a member of which clubs. (For instance, Tony Blair has been a member of the Commonwealth Club - but it closed down in 2012.)
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