Travellers' Club
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| Founded | 1819 |
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| Home Page | www.thetravellersclub.org.uk |
| Address | 106 Pall Mall, London |
| Clubhouse occupied since | 1832 |
| Club established for | Diplomats and Travellers |
| 51°30′24.9″N 0°7′59.4″W / 51.506917°N 0.133167°W | |
The Travellers Club is a gentlemen's club situated at 106 Pall Mall, London, United Kingdom. It is the oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs and one of the most exclusive, having been established in 1819. It was described as "the quintessential English gentleman's club" by the Los Angeles Times in 2004.
The original concept of the club, by Lord Castlereagh and others, dates from the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. They envisaged a club where gentlemen who travelled abroad might meet and offer hospitality to distinguished foreign visitors. The original rules of 1819 excluded from membership anyone “who has not travelled out of the British islands to a distance of at least five hundred miles from London in a direct line”.
The members of the club's first Committee included the Earl of Aberdeen (later Prime Minister), Lord Auckland (after whom Auckland, New Zealand is named), the Marquess of Lansdowne (who had already served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and later refused office as Prime Minister) and Viscount Palmerston (later Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister).
Subsequent members included statesmen and travellers such as Prime Minister George Canning,the Duke of Wellington,Lord John Russell, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, Francis Beaufort (creator of the Beaufort scale), Robert FitzRoy of HMS Beagle, Sir William Edward Parry (explorer of the Northwest Passage), Sir Roderick Murchison (after whom the Murchison crater on the Moon is named) and Sir Wilfred Thesiger. Novelist Anthony Powell was a member and the club is featured in various guises in the work of Graham Greene, Jules Verne, William Makepeace Thackeray and John Le Carre.
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