“Space I can call my own”: private social clubs in London

Explores the experience of the e´lite, private social clubs of London and suggests that they are a flourishing sector of the hospitality industry. The paper suggests that the traditional gentlemen’s club is being joined by a new type of e´lite private social club with more modern conceptions of the “clubbable”. The paper analyses the differences and similarities between the two types of clubs in the areas of gender, value for money, concepts of “e´lite” and the function of a club. The paper contends that private clubs are an increasingly‐significant sector of the hospitality industry, because of the way they fulfil the needs of the late twentieth‐century consumer. They provide high status “niches” for a fragmented social “e´lite” and they fill the space between automated work and leisure.