Bullingdon Club

The Bullingdon Club is an exclusive but unofficial all-male students' dining club based in Oxford. It is noted for its wealthy members, grand banquets and boisterous rituals and raffish behaviour, such as the vandalising ("trashing") of restaurants and students' rooms.

The Bullingdon was originally a sporting club, dedicated to cricket and horse-racing, although club dinners gradually became its principal activity. Membership in the club is expensive, with tailor-made uniforms, regular gourmet hospitality, and a tradition of on-the-spot payment for damages.

The club has attracted attention, due to former members later becoming part of the British political establishment. These include the former Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and former Mayor of London, current Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

The University of Oxford extends no official recognition to the club, and many local restaurants refuse to host its events. This has no discernible effect on the members. It is regularly featured in fiction and drama, sometimes under its own name, and sometimes easily recognisable under another (as in the 2014 film The Riot Club).

The Bullingdon Club was founded over 200 years ago. Petre Mais claims it was founded in 1780 and was limited, to 30 men, and Viscount Long, who was a member in 1875, described it as "an old Oxford institution, with many good traditions". Originally it was a hunting and cricket club, and Thomas Assheton Smith II is recorded as having batted for the Bullingdon against the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1796. In 1805 cricket at Oxford University "was confined to the old Bullingdon Club, which was expensive and exclusive". This foundational sporting purpose is attested to in the Club's symbol.

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