Hypocrites' Club

The Hypocrites' Club was one of the student clubs at Oxford University. Its motto in Greek, from a Pindar's Olympian Ode, was Water is best. This led to the members being called Hypocrites, due to the fact that beer, wine and spirits were indeed the chosen drinks.

The Hypocrites Club was founded in 1921 by John Davies Knatchbull Lloyd, nicknamed the "Widow" since he used the shaving lotion "The Widow Lloyd's Euxesis". Wanting to avoid dining in hall, Lloyd and his friends got together to raise the money necessary to rent two large rooms and a kitchen over a bicycle shop, formerly a medieval house, at 31 St Aldate's (other source said 34 or 131). The rooms were reached through a narrow staircase. They also paid for the part-time services of a cook and a servant-cum-barman. After Evelyn Waugh was introduced to the club by Terence Lucy Greenidge, many of his contemporary fellow students followed soon and the club started to change. From a place where to discuss philosophy it became a place to drink and party. As Waugh remembered later it was a "process of invasion and occupation by a group of wanton Etonians who brought it to speedy dissolution". Waugh's excess drinking life habit started with the club, "It was at the university that I took to drink, discovering in a crude way the contrasting pleasures of intoxication and discrimination. On the two, for many years, I preferred the former." A servant at the club would say: "They call themselves an artists’ club but all they draw is corks!"

William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp was the president of the club and Waugh was the secretary. Members included: Hugh Lygon, William Howard, 8th Earl of Wicklow, Anthony Powell, Graham Pollard, Harold Acton, Robert Byron, Alfred Duggan, Mark Ogilvie-Grant, Arden Hilliard, Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon, David Plunket Greene,Terence Lucy Greenidge, Raoul Loveday, Alastair Hugh Graham,E. E. Evans-Pritchard,Roger Hollis, Claud Cockburn,Anthony Bushell, Brian Howard, Tom Driberg, Christopher Hollis, Alastair Hugh Graham, H.Z. Ziman.

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