Women are now also welcome at the Garrick Club in Covent Garden. Members debated for two hours on a motion to admit women to their ranks. That was according to The Guardian and TheTelegraph ultimately passed with about 60 percent of the vote.
Anyone who wants to become a member of the Garrick pays 1,900 euros per year for access to the building in Garrick Street. In return, you can use the billiard rooms, reading rooms and dining rooms. Escape the hustle and bustle of nearby Leicester Square in the club’s bars.
The gentlemen’s club presents itself as an innocent curiosity, a relic of patriarchy in England. But that image is not entirely correct, as the club’s fifty-page membership book showed last month The Guardian could look into.
Although there are fewer politicians in the club than twenty years ago, the Garrick remains the epicenter of the legal establishment, government figures and a discreet network for prominent figures from the art world. Attempts to modernize the Garrick were met with fierce internal resistance within the club. Members have voted down motions to admit women several times, the last time in 2015.
Sting and Mark Knopfler
The Garrick, like other prestigious clubs, was reserved for men by an old rule. It was regularly criticized as archaic. The demand to admit women to gentlemen’s clubs has become increasingly pressing in recent years.
This time, “many members of the Garrick Club, including Sting, Mark Knopfler and other major actors and producers, have written to the chairman threatening to leave the club if the members do not vote in favor of women’s access,” wrote John Simpson, a BBC Newseditor and member of the club himself, at X.
In 2021, a petition was supported by Cherie Blair, a well-known lawyer and wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. She told how she had to stay outside in 1976 when her future husband was allowed inside. “It is outrageous that so little progress has been made since then,” she wrote. The signatories of the petition pointed out that women were deprived of the opportunity to network in the clubs. This is disadvantageous for them, especially in professions where they are already underrepresented.
The club’s membership list is kept secret, but it is known to include well-known figures from civil service, law, journalism and the arts. King Charles III and actors Brian Cox and Benedict Cumberbatch, among others, are according to The Guardian member.
