The diarist James Lees-Milne was a member of Brooks’s. During the war, when he was in his early thirties, he once dined at the club table with an older man who kept asking him all sorts of questions about wartime food. Lees-Milne was bemused – until he discovered that the man was Lord Woolton (he of the pie) and minister of food. Lees-Milne was a member of Brooks’s on account of his birth and to some extent his occupation. He didn’t have much money and lived in rickety lodgings in Cheyne Walk, looked after by a charwoman. The club gave him access to people like Woolton and people like Woolton probably thought there was benefit in contact with people like him.

Does the same apply today? In his third book on the subject, Seth Alexander Thévoz is keen to get across that London clubland is not dying. Far from it: new clubs are opening with encouraging regularity. Recent additions (relatively) include Shoreditch House, 5 Hertford Street and the Conduit (Rishi Sunak is a member). London has far more clubs than any other city in the world and an astonishing number of them are concentrated in St James’s and Mayfair. Many of the old-world clubs, such as Brooks’s, Boodle’s and White’s, are still ‘gentlemen only’.

From the outside, these places look anachronistic. Why are they still here? I peeked inside the Garrick Club once about forty-five years ago. There were rows of old men asleep in armchairs amid the gilded paraphernalia typical of a stately home. The next generation, hungry for power and prestige, would