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Exclusive interview with Dr. Seth Alexander Thévoz
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Exclusive interview with Dr. Seth Alexander Thévoz

Investigative Journalist and Private Members’ Clubs Expert

This week I sat down with Dr. Seth Alexander Thévoz, a political, cultural and social historian of 19th and 20th century Europe and empires, specialising in the history of private members’ clubs, and the history of corruption. He's also an award winning investigative journalist.

Catch up with all episodes here.

Sam and Seth at the Bricklayers Arms

We intended to meet at the British Film Institute in St Stephen's Street, as I was a former member there and know it's quiet. It was closed. So we headed to The Mandrake. It was expensive. We ended up in the Bricklayers Arms on Gresse Street, just off Charlotte's Street which is off Oxford Street. An old haunt for both of us.

We had a great chat about Private Members’ clubs from the 1800s til today including the merits of Groucho Club, which Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, an associate editor of The Spectator was kicked out of for telling tales and Soho House. Plus the benefits or not of belonging to members owned clubs or corporate enterprises.

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We then veered into our work as investigative journalists, the upcoming British Journalism Awards, the Paul Foot Awards where we first met in 2022, the film and book version of WHITE MISCHIEF. (I've watched, he's read) and finally mad geniuses.

Seth holds degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, London and Warwick, and is a former research associate of the History of Parliament Trust and Nuffield College, Oxford.

His research has focused on two distinct strands - the history of clubs (particularly their global dimension, including their post-colonial legacy) and sociability more generally; and the history of corruption. He worked as a researcher in the House of Commons (2006-7). He was the Librarian of the National Liberal Club for 10 years.

And has also been known to contribute to Private Eye in some capacity or another, allegedly!

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thévoz tells the fascinating and entertaining story of the rise, decline and resurgence of London’s private members’ clubs, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day. In doing so he looks at cultural and political developments beyond the clubs, revealing how while the clubs may have been products of their city and country, they also exerted significant influence on London, Britain and places far beyond.  This is a chronicle, as informative as it is entertaining, of the ups and downs of London clubland, and how it had an impact on parts of the world far from London. It is packed with amusing anecdotes and illustrative examples of the growth of this quirky, unique institution, which grew to spread around the world. London, though, with its four hundred clubs, was always at its heart.  Thévoz reveals how everything we might have thought we knew about these clubs is wrong. They may have started out as white, male, aristocratic watering holes – but that’s only part of the story. All sections of society built their own clubs and lived their lives there: highbrow and lowbrow; women and men; working-class, middle-class and upper-class; international and British. The club has been central to a distinctively British form of leisure over more than three centuries.  Behind Closed Doors is a distillation of a decade of research and writing on London clubs, based on exclusive behind-the-scenes access to archives and proceedings, as well as a love of gossip and scandal.

He has a book out now called Behind Closed Doors: The Secret Life of London’s Private Members’ Clubs (London: Robinson/Little, Brown, 2022; updated paperback edition, 2024

and coming next year…

London Clubland: A Companion for the Curious (London: Robinson/Little, Brown, forthcoming 2025).

Plus his own newsletter Clubland, which you can find at Substack which you should all check out and subscribe to!

Seth's MA in Modern History was completed at King’s College, London (2008-9). He won the Jinty Nelson Prize in History for his dissertation, which was on Winston Churchill’s 1922 election defeat at Dundee, and its ramifications for our understanding of British political realignment in the 1920.

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Seth's PhD was conducted at the University of Warwick on the 19th century political impact of London clubs, supported by a scholarship from the History of Parliament Trust, whilst being jointly supervised by both institutions (2010-4). A reworked version of the thesis was converted into his first book, Club Government, published by I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury in 2018, and shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize for the best history book by a first-time solo author.

He's taught at Georgetown, London, Oxford and Warwick, as well as at other institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum.

So despite that rather daunting CV we had a delightfuland informative chat.

Enjoy!


P.S I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands

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