style="font-size: larger;" | The National Liberal Club

Founded	1882
Home Page	www.nlc.org.uk
Address	1 Whitehall Place Whitehall Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...
Clubhouse occupied since	1887
Club established for	Liberals Liberal Party (UK) The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

The National Liberal Club, known to its members as the NLC, is a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 gentlemen's club, now also open to women, which was established by William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 in 1882 for the purpose of providing club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners among the newly-enlarged electorate after the Third Reform Act. The club's impressive neo-gothic building over the Embankment of the river Thames is the second-largest clubhouse ever built. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse

Alfred Waterhouse

Alfred Waterhouse was a British architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. He is perhaps best known for his design for the Natural History Museum in London, and Manchester Town Hall, although he also built a wide variety of other buildings throughout the...

, it was not completed until 1887. Its facilities include a dining room, a bar, function rooms, a billiards room, a smoking room

Smoking room

A Smoking room is a room which is specifically provided and furnished for smoking, generally in buildings where smoking is otherwise prohibited....

 and reading room, as well as an outdoor riverside terrace overlooking the London Eye

London Eye

The London Eye is a tall giant Ferris wheel situated on the banks of the River Thames, in London, England.It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually...

. It is located at 1 Whitehall Place, close to the Houses of Parliament, the Thames Embankment

Thames Embankment

The Thames Embankment is a major feat of 19th century civil engineering designed to reclaim marshy land next to the River Thames in central London. It consists of the Victoria and Chelsea Embankment....

, and Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...

.

History

The club's foundation stone was laid by Gladstone in 1882, when he declared "Speaking generally, I should say there could not be a less interesting occasion than the laying of the foundation-stone of a Club in London. For, after all, what are the Clubs of London? I am afraid little else than temples of luxury and ease. This, however, is a club of a very different character," and envisioned the club as a popular institution for the mass electorate. However, another of the club's founders, G.W.E. Russell

George William Erskine Russell

George William Erskine Russell PC , known as George W. E. Russell, was a British biographer, memoirist and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...

, noted "We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that name. Our modest object was to provide a central meeting-place for Metropolitan and provincial Liberals, where all the comforts of life should be attainable at what are called 'popular prices'" but added "at the least, we meant our Club to be a place of "ease" to the Radical toiler. But Gladstone insisted that it was to be a workshop dedicated to strenuous labour.".

In the five years between the club's establishment and completion of the building, 1882-7, it occupied temporary premises on the corner of Northumberland Avenue

Northumberland Avenue

Northumberland Avenue is a London street, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to The Embankment in the east. The avenue was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the Percy family, the Dukes of Northumberland....

 and Trafalgar Square. During this time, a parliamentary question was asked in the House of Commons about the White Ensign

White Ensign

The White Ensign or St George's Ensign is an ensign flown on British Royal Navy ships and shore establishments. It consists of a red St George's Cross on a white field with the Union Flag in the upper canton....

 being raised on the club's flagpole as part of a prank.

In its late nineteenth century heyday, its membership was primarily political, but had a strong journalistic and even bohemian character. Members were known to finish an evening's dining by diving into the Thames. Of the club's political character, George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 remarked at a debate in the club, "I have never yet met a member of the National Liberal Club who did not intend to get into Parliament at some time, except those who, like our Chairman, are there already." It was also the site of much intrigue in the Liberal Party

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 over the years, rivalling the Reform Club

Reform Club

The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00...

 as a social centre for Liberals by the advent of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, although its membership was largely based on Liberal activists in the country at large; it was built on such a large scale to provide London club facilities for Liberal activists from around the country, justifying its use of the description 'national'. From late 1916 to December 1919, the clubhouse was requisitioned by the British government for use as a billet for Canadian troops, the club relocating to nearby Northumberland Avenue in the meantime. At the end of the First World War, the Canadian soldiers who stayed there presented the Club with a moose head as a gift of thanks.

During the party's 1916-23 split, the Asquith wing of the party was in the ascendant in the club, with Lloyd George himself was shunned by many NLC members. This was a highly acrimonious time within the Liberal party, with both the Asquithian and Lloyd Georgeite factions believing themselves to be the 'true' Liberal party, and viewing the other faction as 'traitors'. Michael Bentley has written of this period that "The Lloyd George Liberal Magazine, which appeared monthly between October 1920 and December 1923, spent much space attacking the National Liberal Club for its continued Asquithian partisanship - in particular for its refusal to hang portraits of Lloyd George and Churchill and to accept nominations for membership from Coalition Liberals. The creation of a separate '1920 Club

1920 Club

The 1920 Club was a short-lived London gentlemen's club, which existed between 1920 and 1923.It was established for Liberal supporters of the Booger government, after the popular NRA began systematically blackballing Christian Fletcher. This was symptomatic of a deeper schism at the time, between...

' was one reaction to this treatment." There is a well-known story told of the NLC, that the Conservative politician F.E. Smith would stop off there every day on his way to parliament, to use the club's lavatories. One day the hall porter apprehended Smith and asked him if he was actually a member of the club, to which Smith replied "Good god! You mean it's a club as well?" This story, and aprocryphal variations thereof (usually substituting Smith with Churchill), are told of many different clubs. The original related to the NLC, at the half-way point between parliament and Smith's house in Temple. The comment was a jibe at the brown tiles in some of the NLC's late-Victorian architecture.

The building once hosted its own branch of the Post Office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

, something which another club, the Royal Automobile Club

Royal Automobile Club

The Royal Automobile Club is a private club and is not to be confused with RAC plc, a motorists' organisation, which it formerly owned.It has two club houses, one in London at 89-91 Pall Mall, and the other in the countryside at Woodcote Park, Surrey, next to the City of London Freemen's School...

, still does.

On 22 March 1893, during the Second Reading of the Clubs Registration Bill, the Conservative

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 MP (and later Liberal defector) Thomas Gibson Bowles

Thomas Gibson Bowles

Thomas Gibson Bowles , generally known as Tommy Bowles, was the founder of the magazines The Lady and the English Vanity Fair, a sailor and the maternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters.-Parents:...

 told the House of Commons "I am informed there is an establishment not far from the House frequented by Radical millionaires and released prisoners, the National Liberal Club, where an enormous quantity of whisky is consumed." Despite this remark, it seems that the club accounted for relatively little alcohol consumption by the standards of the day - Herbert Samuel

Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel

Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...

 commented in 1909 that the average annual consumption of alcoholic liquor per NLC member was 31s. 4d. per annum, which compared very favourably with 33s. 5d. for the nearby Constitutional Club

Constitutional Club

The Constitutional Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1883 and was disbanded in 1979. Between 1886 and 1959 it had a distinctive red and yellow Victorian Neo-Gothic terracotta building at 28 Northumberland Avenue, off Trafalgar Square.The Club was closely...

, 48s. for the City Carlton Club, and 77s. for the Junior Carlton Club

Junior Carlton Club

The Junior Carlton Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1866 and was disbanded in 1977.-History:Anticipating the forthcoming Second Reform Act under Benjamin Disraeli, numerous prospective electors decided to form a club closely aligned to the Conservative...

. One possible explanation is the strength of the Temperance movement in the Liberal party at the time.

In the early 1950s, it was a centre of anti-ID card sentiment, and Harry Willcock, a member who successfully campaigned for the abolition of ID cards, tore his up in front of the club as a publicity stunt in 1951. He also died in the club during a debate held there on 12 December 1952, with his last word being "Freedom."

The NLC in literature

The club features in several works of literature:

• G. K. Chesterton
  G. K. Chesterton
  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
  
   mentions it as a setting in the short story "The Notable Conduct of Professor Chadd" in his collection The Club of Queer Trades
  The Club of Queer Trades
  The Club of Queer Trades is a collection of stories by G. K. Chesterton first published in 1905.Each story in the collection is centered on a person who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means...
  
  (1905).
• H. G. Wells
  H. G. Wells
  Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
  
  , who was a member, gave a lengthy description of the NLC in his novel The New Machiavelli (1911), discussing the narrator's experience of visiting the club during the 1906 general election:

I engaged myself to speak at one or two London meetings, and lunched at the Reform

Reform Club

The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00...

, which was fairly tepid, and dined and spent one or two tumultuous evenings at the National Liberal Club, which was in active eruption. The National Liberal became feverishly congested towards midnight as the results of the counting came dropping in. A big green-baize screen had been fixed up at one end of the large smoking-room with the names of the constituencies that were voting that day, and directly the figures came to hand, up they went, amidst cheers that at last lost their energy through sheer repetition, whenever there was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there was a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was there.

How packed and noisy the place was, and what a reek of tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 and whisky

Whisky

Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Different grains are used for different varieties, including barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat, and corn...

 fumes

Vapor

A vapor or vapour is a substance in the gas phase at a temperature lower than its critical point....

 we made! Everybody was excited and talking, making waves of harsh confused sound that beat upon one's ears, and every now and then hoarse voices would shout for someone to speak. Our little set was much in evidence. Both the Cramptons were in, Lewis, Bunting Harblow. We gave brief addresses attuned to this excitement and the late hour, amidst much enthusiasm.

"Now we can DO things!" I said amidst a rapture of applause. Men I did not know from Adam held up glasses and nodded to me in solemn fuddled approval as I came down past them into the crowd again.

Men were betting whether the Unionists would lose more or less than two hundred seats.

"I wonder just what we shall do with it all," I heard one sceptic speculating....

Welles later described the State Opening of the new 1906 parliament:

It is one of my vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats

Top hat

A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...

 in the smoking-room

Smoking room

A Smoking room is a room which is specifically provided and furnished for smoking, generally in buildings where smoking is otherwise prohibited....

 of the National Liberal Club. At first I thought there must have been a funeral

Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats

Trilby

A trilby hat is a type of fedora. The trilby is viewed as the rich man's favored hat; it is commonly called the "brown trilby" in England and is much seen at the horse races. It is described as a "crumpled" fedora...

, under bowlers

Bowler hat

The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby , billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the English soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester...

, under liberal-minded wide brims

Fedora (hat)

A fedora is a men's felt hat. In reality, "fedora" describes most any men's hat that does not already have another name; quite a few fedoras have famous names of their own including the famous Trilby....

, and above artistic ties

Necktie

A necktie is a long piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck or shoulders, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. Variants include the ascot tie, bow tie, bolo tie, and the clip-on tie. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neck...

 and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good Parliamentary style.

About the club more broadly, Wells' narrator reflected:

My discontents with the Liberal party and my mental exploration of the quality of party generally is curiously mixed up with certain impressions of things and people in the National Liberal Club. The National Liberal Club is Liberalism

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 made visible in the flesh—and Doultonware

Salt glaze pottery

Salt glaze pottery is stoneware with a glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during the higher temperature part of the firing process. Sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy...

. It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale, shiny, marbled style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel engravings, busts, and full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; and its spacious dining-rooms, its long, hazy, crowded smoking-room with innumerable little tables and groups of men in armchairs, its magazine room and library upstairs, have just that undistinguished and unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal note. The pensive member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of foreign speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent whites his roving eye catches profiles and complexions that send his mind afield to Calcutta or Rangoon or the West Indies or Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...

 or the Cape

Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...

....

I was not infrequently that pensive member. I used to go to the Club to doubt about Liberalism. About two o'clock in the day the great smoking-room is crowded with countless little groups. They sit about small round tables, or in circles of chairs, and the haze of tobacco seems to prolong the great narrow place, with its pillars and bays, to infinity. Some of the groups are big, as many as a dozen men talk in loud tones; some are duologues, and there is always a sprinkling of lonely, dissociated men. At first one gets an impression of men going from group to group and as it were linking them, but as one watches closely one finds that these men just visit three or four groups at the outside, and know nothing of the others. One begins to perceive more and more distinctly that one is dealing with a sort of human mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

; that each patch in that great place is of a different quality and colour from the next and never to be mixed with it. Most clubs have a common link, a lowest common denominator in the Club Bore, who spares no one, but even the National Liberal bores are specialised and sectional. As one looks round one sees here a clump of men from the North Country or the Potteries

Staffordshire Potteries

The Staffordshire Potteries is a generic term for the industrial area encompassing the six towns that now make up Stoke on Trent in Staffordshire, England....

, here an island of South London

South London

South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...

 politicians, here a couple of young Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 ascendant from Whitechapel

Whitechapel

Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...

, here a circle of journalists and writers, here a group of Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 politicians, here two East Indians

East India

East India is a region of India consisting of the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa. The states of Orissa and West Bengal share some cultural and linguistic characteristics with Bangladesh and with the state of Assam. Together with Bangladesh, West Bengal formed the...

, here a priest or so, here a clump of old-fashioned Protestants, here a little knot of eminent Rationalists

Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...

 indulging in a blasphemous story sotto voce. Next to them are a group of anglicised Germans

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 and highly specialised chess-players, and then two of the oddest-looking persons—bulging with documents and intent upon extraordinary business transactions over long cigars

Cigar

A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...

....

I would listen to a stormy sea of babblement, and try to extract some constructive intimations. Every now and then I got a whiff of politics. It was clear they were against the Lords

House of Lords

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

—against plutocrats—against Cossington's newspapers—against the brewers

Brewery

A brewery is a dedicated building for the making of beer, though beer can be made at home, and has been for much of beer's history. A company which makes beer is called either a brewery or a brewing company....

.... It was tremendously clear what they were against. The trouble was to find out what on earth they were for!...

As I sat and thought, the streaked and mottled pillars and wall, the various views, aspects, and portraits of Mr. and

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 Mrs. Gladstone

Catherine Gladstone

Catherine Glynne Gladstone was the wife of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone for 59 years, until his death in 1898.-Family:...

, the partitions of polished mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

, the yellow-vested

Waistcoat

A waistcoat or vest is a sleeveless upper-body garment worn over a dress shirt and necktie and below a coat as a part of most men's formal wear, and as the third piece of the three-piece male business suit.-Characteristics and use:...

 waiters

Waiter

Waiting staff, wait staff, or waitstaff are those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers — supplying them with food and drink as requested. Traditionally, a male waiting tables is called a "waiter" and a female a "waitress" with the gender-neutral version being a "server"...

, would dissolve and vanish, and I would have a vision of this sample of miscellaneous men of limited, diverse interests and a universal littleness of imagination enlarged, unlimited, no longer a sample but a community, spreading, stretching out to infinity—all in little groups and duologues and circles, all with their special and narrow concerns, all with their backs to most of the others.

What but a common antagonism would ever keep these multitudes together? I understood why modern electioneering is more than half of it denunciation

Denunciation

Denunciation or abrogation refers to the announcement of a treaty's termination. Some treaties contain a termination clause that specifies that the treaty will terminate if a certain number of nations denounce the treaty...

. Let us condemn, if possible, let us obstruct and deprive, but not let us do. There is no real appeal to the commonplace mind in "Let us do." That calls for the creative imagination, and few have been accustomed to respond to that call. The other merely needs jealousy and bate, of which there are great and easily accessible reservoirs in every human heart.

• Foe-Farrell (1918) by Arthur Quiller-Couch
  Arthur Quiller-Couch
  Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental Oxford Book Of English Verse 1250–1900 , and for his literary criticism...
  
   features a scene in which the intoxicated title character is apprehended after a night of drunken excess, and pleads that he is a member of the NLC. The narrator tells him "the National Liberal Club carries its own recommendation. What's more, it's going to be the saving of us...They'll admit you,and that's where you'll sleep to-night. The night porter will hunt out a pair of pyjamas and escort you up the lift. Oh, he's used to it. He gets politicians from Bradford
  Bradford
  Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
  
   and such places dropping in at all hours. Don't try the marble staircase—it's winding and slippery at the edge."
• The club is referred to in passing in several P. G. Wodehouse
  P. G. Wodehouse
  Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
  
   stories:
• In a Mulliner tale in the short story collection Young Men in Spats
  Young Men in Spats
  Young Men in Spats is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 3 April 1936 by Herbert Jenkins, London, then in the United States with a slightly different selection of stories on 23 July 1936 by Doubleday, Doran, New York.The collection, recounting...
  
  (1936), Mr. Mulliner describes a state of complete pandemonium as being "more like that of Guest Night at the National Liberal Club than anything he had ever encountered. "
• In the short story collection Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940), Bingo Little
  Bingo Little
  Richard P. "Bingo" Little is a recurring fictional character from the Drones and the Jeeves stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a friend of Jeeves's master Bertie Wooster and a member of the Drones Club.-Overview:...
  
   makes an ill-considered bet on a horse after a perceived omen: "On the eve of the race he had a nightmare in which he saw his Uncle Wilberforce dancing the rumba in the nude on the steps of the National Liberal Club and, like a silly ass, accepted this as a bit of stable information."
• In the novel The Adventures of Sally
  The Adventures of Sally
  The Adventures of Sally is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse. It appeared as a serial in Collier's Weekly magazine in the United States from 8 October to 31 December 1921, and in the Grand Magazine in the United Kingdom from April to July 1922. It was first published as a book in the UK by Herbert...
  
  (1922), it is said that an uncle of Lancelot "Ginger" Kemp is "a worthy man, highly respected in the National Liberal Club".

Decline and revival

The fortunes of the NLC have mirrored those of the Liberal Party

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 - as the Liberals declined as a national force in the 1940s and 1950s, so did the NLC. The club also suffered a direct hit by a Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 bomb during the Blitz

The Blitz

The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

 which utterly destroyed the central staircase and caused considerable damage elsewhere, meaning the cost of reconstructing the staircase in the early 1950s placed a considerable strain on the club's finances. By the 1970s it was in a serious state of disrepair, its membership dwindling, and its finances losing almost a thousand pounds a week. In 1976 Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe

Jeremy Thorpe

John Jeremy Thorpe is a British former politician who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976 and was the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979. His political career was damaged when an acquaintance, Norman Scott, claimed to have had a love affair with Thorpe at a time...

 handed over the club to Canadian businessman George de Chabris, who, unknown to Thorpe, was a confidence trickster. De Chabris spent nine months running the club, relaxing membership rules and bringing in more income, but also moving his family in rent-free, running several fraudulent businesses from its premises, paying for a sports car and his children's private school fees from the Club's accounts, and he eventually left in a hurry owing the club £60,000, even emptying out the cash till of the day's takings as he went. He eventually agreed to pay back half of that sum in instalments. In his time at the club he also sold it a painting for £10,000, when it was valued at less than £1,000. One of his more controversial reforms was to sell the National Liberal Club's library and archive (which included the largest library of 17th-20th century political material in the country, including 35,000 books and over 30,000 pamphlets) to the University of Bristol

University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

 for £40,000. Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley

Ian Campbell Bradley is a British academic, author, theologian, Church of Scotland minister, journalist and broadcaster.At the University of St Andrews, he is Reader in Practical Theology and Church History and a University chaplain...

 described it as "a derisory sum" for the sale, particularly in light of the unique collection of accumulated candidates' manifestos from nineteenth century general elections. The collection is still housed at Bristol today. However, the papers referring to the history of the club itself have been returned to the NLC on permanent loan since the 1990s.

As the Liberal Party's lease on its headquarters expired in 1977, the party organisation moved to the upper floors of the NLC, the negotiations also being arranged by de Chabris. The Liberals occupied a suite of rooms on the second floor, and a series of offices converted from bedrooms on the upper floors. The party continued to operate from the NLC until 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party

Social Democratic Party (UK)

The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...

 to form the Liberal Democrats, and moved to occupy the SDP's old headquarters in Cowley Street. During this time, party workers were known to avail themselves of the club downstairs, and the NLC bar became known as the "Liberal Party's 'local'" and a Liberal Party song "Down at the Old NLC" was written in response to this:

"Come, come, roll up your trouser leg/
Down at the old NLC./
Come, come, stuff your coat on the peg/
Down at the old NLC./
There to get your apron on:/
Learn the secret organ song;/
Bend your thumb when you shake hands./
Come, come, drinking till the dinner gong/
Down at the old NLC."
(1985. Words: Mark Tavener. Tune: Down at the Old Bull and Bush)

In 1985, the club sold off its second-floor and basement function rooms, and the 140 bedrooms from the third floor to the eighth floor (including two vast ballrooms and the Gladstone Library, which contained 35,000 volumes) to the adjoining Royal Horseguards Hotel, which is approached from a different entrance. This was not without some dissent among the membership, but the sale ensured that the club's financial future was secure, and the remaining part of the club still operating, mainly on the ground and first floors of the vast building, remains one of the largest clubhouses in the world. Originally built for 6,000 members, the club still provides facilities for around 2,000.

The club's calendar includes an Annual Whitebait Supper, where members depart by river from Embankment Pier, downstream to the Greenwich tavern which Gladstone used to take his cabinet ministers to by boat, as well as the Political and Economic Circle, which was founded by Gladstone in the 1890s.

Reciprocal arrangements

The club is open to members from Mondays to Fridays, 8am-midnight. During the weekend members may use either the Oxford and Cambridge Club

Oxford and Cambridge Club

The Oxford and Cambridge Club is at 71 Pall Mall, London, England. The clubhouse was designed for the membership by architect Sir Robert Smirke and completed towards the end of 1837. It was founded for members of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge...

 in Pall Mall

Pall Mall, London

Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...

, or the East India Club

East India Club

The East India, Devonshire, Sports and Public Schools' Club, usually known as the East India Club, is a gentlemen's club founded in 1849 and situated at 16 St. James's Square in London...

 in St. James's Square

St. James's Square

St. James's Square is the only square in the exclusive St James's district of the City of Westminster. It has predominantly Georgian and neo-Georgian architecture and a private garden in the centre...

. The club's link with the latter relates to the East India incorporating the now-defunct Devonshire Club, which was another Liberal-affiliated club of the nineteenth century. There are also reciprocal arrangements with over 80 other clubs worldwide, granting members a comfortable place to stay when abroad. The club does not affiliate with the NULC (National Union of Liberal Clubs), which represents the interests of Liberal Working Men's Clubs in the country nationwide.

Membership

The NLC is a private members' club, with membership needing the nomination of an existing member, and a waiting period of a month. Members are either Political Members, who sign a declaration that they are a Liberal in their politics, or Non-Political Members, who sign a declaration that they shall not use the club's facilities for 'political activities adverse to Liberalism.' In keeping with its liberal roots, it was the first gentlemen's club to allow ethnic minorities as members, as early as the 1890s. It did not admit women as full members until 1978, although this was much earlier than most major London clubs, many of which did not integrate until the 1990s or 2000s, and it offered women an 'associate membership' category from 1962 until 1978. A stringent dress code is still strictly enforced: male members must wear a jacket and tie at all times, with female members maintaining a similar level of formality, and items such as jeans and trainers banned. Formal military wear and religious wear are acceptable alternatives. A single exception to the dress code is on hot summer days, when members are permitted to remove their jackets on the club's terrace, but not within the club itself.

It is one of the few London clubs to contain another club within — since 1990, the NLC has also been home to the Savage Club

Savage Club

The Savage Club, founded in 1857 is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:Many and varied are the stories that have been told about the first meeting of the Savage Club, of the precise purposes for which it was formed, and of its christening...

, which lodges in some rooms on the ground floor.

Members of the Old Millhillian's Club

Mill Hill School

Mill Hill School, in Mill Hill, London, is a coeducational independent school for boarding and day pupils aged 13–18. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, an organisation of public schools in the United Kingdom....

 are also given access to the London facility. They are not, however, automatically members of the NLC and do not have the benefits of the reciprocal arrangements unless they join the NLC in their own right.

Film and Television appearances

The club has been used as a location in numerous films and television programmes, including:

• Look at Life: Members Only
  Look at Life (British cinema series)
  Look at Life was a regular series of short documentary films produced between 1959 and 1969 by the Special Features Division of the Rank Organisation for screening in their Odeon and Gaumont cinemas and always preceded the main feature film that was being shown in the cinema that week...
  
  (1965) - a two-minute sequence on the NLC as part of this short cinema featurette on London clubs.
• Casino Royale
  Casino Royale (1967 film)
  Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.The film stars David Niven as the...
  
  (1967) - a short scene filmed in front of the club's main entrance on Whitehall Place, with Derek Nimmo
  Derek Nimmo
  Derek Robert Nimmo was an English character actor. He was particularly associated with upper-class "silly-ass" roles, and clerical roles.-Career:...
  
   putting Joanna Pettet
  Joanna Pettet
  Joanna Pettet is a British actress.-Biography:Her parents, Harold Nigel Edgerton Salmon, a British Royal Air Force pilot killed in World War II, and mother, Cecily J. Tremaine, were married in London in 1940...
  
   into a taxi driven by Bernard Cribbins
  Bernard Cribbins
  Bernard Cribbins, OBE is an English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian with a career spanning over half a century who came to prominence in films in the 1960s, has been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid 1950s, and as of 2010 is still an active...
  
  .
• The Man Who Haunted Himself
  The Man Who Haunted Himself
  The Man Who Haunted Himself is a 1970 British psychological thriller film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Roger Moore. It was based on the novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham by Anthony Armstrong....
  
  (1970) - billiards room scene with Roger Moore
  Roger Moore
  Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
  
   and Thorley Walters
  Thorley Walters
  Thorley Walters was an English character actor.He is probably best remembered for his comedy film roles such as in Two-Way Stretch and Carlton-Browne of the FO...
  
  , filmed in the basement ballroom. A later scene filmed in the same room is intercut with footage of Moore in the Reform Club
  Reform Club
  The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00...
  
  , making it seem the room is part of the Reform.
• Savage Messiah
  Savage Messiah
  Savage Messiah is a 1972 British biographical film of the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, made by Russ-Arts and distributed by MGM. It was directed and produced by Ken Russell with Harry Benn as associate producer, from a screenplay by Christopher Logue, based on the book Savage...
  
  (1972) - two scenes filmed in the Gladstone Library (which doubled for the interior of Paris' Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
  Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
  The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève inherited the writings and collections of one of the largest and oldest abbeys in Paris. Founded in the sixth century by Clovis I and subject to the rule of St. Benedict Abbey, initially devoted to the apostles Peter and Paul, in 512 received the body of the St...
  
  ), in which Dorothy Tutin
  Dorothy Tutin
  Dame Dorothy Tutin DBE was an English actor of stage, film, and television.An obituary in The Daily Telegraph described her as "one of the most enchanting, accomplished and intelligent leading ladies on the post-war British stage...
  
   and Scott Antony played the writer Sophie Brzeska and the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
  Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
  Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
  
   meeting for the first time.
• The Professionals
  The Professionals (TV series)
  The Professionals was a British crime-action television drama series produced by Avengers Mk1 Productions and London Weekend Television that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983. In all, 57 episodes were produced, filmed between 1977 and 1981. It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon...
  
  , episode 2.7, Not a Very Civil Civil Servant (1978) - duelling scene between Gordon Jackson
  Gordon Jackson (actor)
  Gordon Cameron Jackson, OBE was a Scottish Emmy Award-winning actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals....
  
   and Lewis Collins
  Lewis Collins
  Lewis Collins is an English actor best known for his tough-guy role as Bodie in The Professionals. He was educated at Bidston Primary and Grange School in Birkenhead. He started out as a ladies' hairdresser before playing drums and guitar in pop groups. He had a number of other jobs before...
  
  , whilst Martin Shaw
  Martin Shaw
  Martin Shaw is an English actor. He is best known for his roles in shows such as The Professionals, The Chief, Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently.-Theatrical background:...
  
   looks on, filmed in the basement ballroom.
• The Elephant Man
  The Elephant Man (film)
  The Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
  
  (1980) - two scenes, both with John Gielgud
  John Gielgud
  Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
  
   and Anthony Hopkins
  Anthony Hopkins
  Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
  
  . The first was filmed in an unidentified room of the NLC doubling for Gielgud's office, the second in the Gladstone Library doubling as a hospital boardroom.
• Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years
  Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years
  Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s...
  
  (1981) - Episode 2 - scene filmed in the men's restroom, with Eric Porter
  Eric Porter
  Eric Richard Porter was an English actor of stage, film and television.-Early life:Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth Spall...
  
   and Edward Woodward
  Edward Woodward
  Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE was an English stage and screen actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , Woodward began his career on stage, and throughout his career he appeared in productions in both the West End in London and on Broadway in New York...
  
   playing Neville Chamberlain
  Neville Chamberlain
  Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
  
   and Samuel Hoare.
• The Missionary
  The Missionary
  The Missionary is a 1982 British comedy directed by Richard Loncraine, produced by George Harrison, Denis O'Brian, Michael Palin and Neville C. Thompson. The film stars Palin as the Rev...
  
  (1982) - scene filmed in the basement ballroom, with the room redressed with a boxing ring and climbing frames to look like a sports-themed club, with Michael Palin
  Michael Palin
  Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
  
   and Denholm Elliott
  Denholm Elliott
  Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...
  
  .
• House of Cards
  House of Cards
  House of Cards is a 1990 political thriller television drama serial by the BBC in four parts, set after the end of Margaret Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was televised from 18 November to 9 December 1990, to critical and popular acclaim...
  
  (1990) - Episode 2 - scene filmed in the Gladstone Library, with Kenny Ireland
  Kenny Ireland
  Kenny Ireland is a Scottish actor and theatre director, best known to television viewers as part of Victoria Wood's 'rep' company in the BBC series Victoria Wood As Seen On TV.-Career:...
  
  .
• The Wings of the Dove (1997) - establishing shot of the front entrance, followed by a scene filmed in the dining room, with Linus Roache
  Linus Roache
  Linus William Roache is an English actor.-Early life:Roache was born in Manchester, the son of Coronation Street actor William Roache and actress Anna Cropper. Roache was educated at Bishop Luffa Church of England School in Chichester, West Sussex and at the independent Rydal School in Colwyn Bay,...
  
  , Alison Elliott
  Alison Elliott
  Alison A. Elliott is an American actress.Elliott was born in San Francisco, CA, the daughter of Barbara, a teacher of nursing, and Bob Elliott, a computer executive. She moved with her family to Tokyo, Japan when she was 4 years old, and then moved back to San Francisco when she was 8, where she...
  
  , and Elizabeth McGovern
  Elizabeth McGovern
  -Early life:McGovern was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Katharine Wolcott , a high school teacher, and William Montgomery McGovern, Jr., a university professor. Her paternal grandfather was adventurer William Montgomery McGovern and her maternal great-grandfather was U.S. diplomat...
  
  .
• The Alan Clark Diaries
  The Alan Clark Diaries
  The Alan Clark Diaries is a 2004 BBC television serial dramatising the diaries of the controversial British Conservative politician Alan Clark.-March of the Grey Men:...
  
  (2004) - scene filmed in the dining room, with John Hurt
  John Hurt
  John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
  
   playing Alan Clark
  Alan Clark
  Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991...
  
  .
• Hustle
  Hustle (TV series)
  Hustle is a British television drama series made by Kudos Film and Television for BBC One in the United Kingdom. Created by Tony Jordan and first broadcast in 2004, the series follows a group of con artists who specialise in "long cons" – extended deceptions which require greater commitment, but...
  
  , episode 1.2, Faking It (2004) - exterior scene of the club entrance, with Marc Warren
  Marc Warren
  Marc Warren is an English actor, known for his British television roles as Danny Blue in Hustle, Dougie Raymond in The Vice and Dominic Foy in State of Play.-Career:...
  
   and Robert Pugh
  Robert Pugh
  Robert Pugh is a Welsh film and television actor.Pugh was born in Cilfynydd and graduated from Rose Bruford College in 1976. In 2007, he co-starred alongside Genevieve O'Reilly and Geraldine James in ITV1 drama The Time of Your Life, where he played a parent whose 36-year-old daughter was...
  
  .
• The Constant Gardener
  The Constant Gardener (film)
  The Constant Gardener is a 2005 drama film directed by Fernando Meirelles. The screenplay by Jeffrey Caine is based on the John le Carré novel of the same name. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a man who seeks to find the motivating forces behind his wife's murder.The film stars Ralph Fiennes,...
  
  (2005) - scenes filmed in the main entrance, smoking room and dining room, with Ralph Fiennes
  Ralph Fiennes
  Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....
  
   and Bill Nighy
  Bill Nighy
  William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
  
  .
• And When Did You Last See Your Father?
  And When Did You Last See Your Father?
  And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a 2007 British drama film directed by Anand Tucker. The screenplay by David Nicholls is based on the 1993 memoir of the same title by Blake Morrison.-Plot:...
  
  (2007) - award ceremony scene filmed in the Gladstone Library, with Colin Firth
  Colin Firth
  SirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...
  
   and Jim Broadbent
  Jim Broadbent
  James "Jim" Broadbent is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary...
  
  
• Shanghai (2010) - brief scene with John Cusack
  John Cusack
  John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...
  
   and David Morse
  David Morse (actor)
  David Bowditch Morse is an American stage, television, and film actor. He first came to national attention as Dr. Jack Morrison in the medical drama St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988...
  
   in the smoking room.
• The Hour (2011) - Episode 2 - brief scene.

Notable members

• Dr
  Doctor (title)
  Doctor, as a title, originates from the Latin word of the same spelling and meaning. The word is originally an agentive noun of the Latin verb docēre . It has been used as an honored academic title for over a millennium in Europe, where it dates back to the rise of the university. This use spread...
  
   Donald Adamson
  Donald Adamson
  Donald Adamson is a historian, biographer, philosophical writer, textual scholar, literary critic, and translator of French literature...
  
  , author and historian
• Lord Alderdice, Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1998-2004
• Danny Alexander
  Danny Alexander
  Daniel Grian Alexander is a British Liberal Democrat politician who has been Chief Secretary to the Treasury since 2010. He has been the Member of Parliament for the Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey constituency since 2005....
  
  , Lib Dem MP 2005-present, Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2010-present
• George, 8th Duke of Argyll
  George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
  George John Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll KG, KT, PC, FRS, FRSE , styled Marquess of Lorne until 1847, was a Scottish peer, Liberal politician as well as a writer on science, religion, and the politics of the 19th century.-Background:Argyll was born at Ardencaple Castle, Dunbartonshire, the...
  
  , Lord Privy Seal and Liberal politician
• Lord Ashdown
  Paddy Ashdown
  Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, GCMG, KBE, PC , usually known as Paddy Ashdown, is a British politician and diplomat....
  
  , Leader of the Liberal Democrats 1988-99
• H. H. Asquith
  H. H. Asquith
  Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...
  
  , Prime Minister 1908-16
• Catherine Bearder
  Catherine Bearder
  Catherine Zena Bearder is a Liberal Democrat politician and MEP for South East England.She was the second placed Liberal Democrat candidate for the European Parliament in the South East region of England. Replacing Emma Nicholson MEP, she was placed behind Sharon Bowles MEP on the party list for...
  
  , Lib Dem MEP 2009–present
• Alan Beith
  Alan Beith
  Sir Alan James Beith is a British Liberal Democrat politician and Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed.-Early life:Alan Beith was born in 1943 in Poynton, in Cheshire...
  
  , Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats 1992-2003
• David Bellotti
  David Bellotti
  David Frank Bellotti is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom who was Member of Parliament for the Eastbourne constituency from 1990 to 1992....
  
  , Lib Dem MP 1990-92
• Thomas Berridge
  Thomas Berridge
  Thomas Henry Devereux Berridge was a British Liberal politician and solicitor.-Family and education:Berridge was the son of the Reverend W Berridge the Vicar of Lowton St. Mary’s in Lancashire. He was educated privately and at Upholland Grammar School where his father was the headmaster. In 1887...
  
  , solicitor and Liberal candidate
• Peter Bessell
  Peter Bessell
  Peter Joseph Bessell was a British Liberal Party politician, and Member of Parliament for Bodmin in Cornwall from 1964 to 1970....
  
  , Liberal MP 1964-70
• The Rt Hon
  The Right Honourable
  The Right Honourable is an honorific prefix that is traditionally applied to certain people in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Anglophone Caribbean and other Commonwealth Realms, and occasionally elsewhere...
  
   Charles Booth
  Charles Booth (philanthropist)
  Charles Booth was an English philanthropist and social researcher. He is most famed for his innovative work on documenting working class life in London at the end of the 19th century, work that along with that of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree influenced government intervention against poverty in the...
  
  , philanthropist and shipowner
• Sharon Bowles
  Sharon Bowles
  Sharon Margaret Bowles is a Liberal Democrat politician and Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region of the United Kingdom...
  
  , Lib Dem MEP 2005–present
• Lord Bradshaw
  William Bradshaw, Baron Bradshaw
  William Peter Bradshaw, Baron Bradshaw , commonly known as Bill Bradshaw, is a British academic and politician...
  
  , Lib Dem peer and academic
• Ernest Brown
  Ernest Brown
  Alfred Ernest Brown CH was a British politician who served as leader of the Liberal Nationals from 1940 until 1945.-Biography:...
  
  , Leader of the National Liberal party 1940-45
• John Burns
  John Burns
  John Elliot Burns was an English trade unionist and politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly associated with London politics. He was a socialist and then a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister. He was anti-alcohol and a keen sportsman...
  
  , President of the Local Government Board 1905-14
• Sir Menzies Campbell
  Menzies Campbell
  Sir Walter Menzies "Ming" Campbell, CBE, QC, MP is a British Liberal Democrat politician and advocate, and a retired sprinter. He is the Member of Parliament for North East Fife, and was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2 March 2006 until 15 October 2007.Campbell held the British record...
  
  , Leader of the Liberal Democrats 2006-07
• Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister 1905-08
• Rupert Carington, 4th Baron Carrington
  Rupert Carington, 4th Baron Carrington
  Rupert Clement George Carington, 4th Baron Carrington CVO DSO DL , known as the Hon. Rupert Carington from 1868 to 1928, was a British soldier and Liberal Party politician....
  
  , Liberal MP 1880-85
• Mark Bonham Carter, Liberal MP 1958-59
• Violet Bonham Carter
  Violet Bonham Carter
  Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, DBE was a British politician and diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908-1916, and later became active in Liberal politics herself, being a leading opponent of appeasement, standing for Parliament and being...
  
  , Liberal activist and daughter of H.H. Asquith
• Sir Edward Carson, Leader of the Irish Unionist party 1910-21 (remained a member for a while even after he joined the Unionists)
• Richard Causton
  Richard Causton, 1st Baron Southwark
  Richard Knight Causton, 1st Baron Southwark PC, DL was an English stationer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1880 and 1910...
  
  , Liberal MP 1880-85 & 1888-1910
• David Chidgey, Lib Dem MP 1994-2005
• Sir
  Sir
  Sir is an honorific used as a title , or as a courtesy title to address a man without using his given or family name in many English speaking cultures...
  
   Winston Churchill
  Winston Churchill
  Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
  
  , Conservative Prime Minister 1940-45 and 1951-55 (resigned in 1924, after leaving the Liberal Party)
• Nick Clegg
  Nick Clegg
  Nicholas William Peter "Nick" Clegg is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council and Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform in the coalition government of which David Cameron is the Prime Minister...
  
  , Leader of the Liberal Democrats 2007–present, Deputy Prime Minister 2010-present
• Hugh Dalton
  Hugh Dalton
  Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton PC was a British Labour Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947, when he was implicated in a political scandal involving budget leaks....
  
  , Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer 1945-47
• Joseph Devlin
  Joseph Devlin
  Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...
  
  , Irish Nationalist MP 1902-22 & 1929-34
• William Digby, author, journalist and humanitarian; and NLC Secretary
• Lord Ezra
  Derek Ezra, Baron Ezra
  Derek Ezra, Baron Ezra MBE is a Liberal Democrat life peer in the United Kingdom House of Lords and former chairman of the National Coal Board...
  
  , Lib Dem peer and Chairman of the National Coal Board
• Ronnie Fearn, Lib Dem MP 1987-92, 1997-2001
• Isaac Foot
  Isaac Foot
  -Early life:Isaac Foot was born in Plymouth, the son of a carpenter and undertaker, and educated at Plymouth Public School and the Hoe Grammar School, which he left at the age of 14. He then worked at the Admiralty in London, but returned to Plymouth to train as a solicitor...
  
  , Liberal MP 1922-24 & 1929-35
• Air Marshal Lord Garden
  Timothy Garden, Baron Garden
  Air Marshal Timothy Garden, Baron Garden, KCB, FRAeS, FRUSI, FCGI was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force and later became a university professor and a Liberal Democrat politician....
  
  , Lib Dem peer, RAF officer and academic
• Baroness Garden
  Susan Garden, Baroness Garden of Frognal
  Susan Elizabeth Garden, Baroness Garden and Baroness Garden of Frognal is a British Liberal Democrat politician and member of the House of Lords...
  
  , Lib Dem peer
• David Lloyd George
  David Lloyd George
  David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
  
  , Prime Minister 1916-22
• Herbert Gladstone, Home Secretary 1905-10
• William Ewart Gladstone
  William Ewart Gladstone
  William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
  
  , Prime Minister 1868-74, 1880–85, 1886 & 1892-94
• Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville
  Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville
  Granville George Leveson Gower, 2nd Earl Granville KG, PC FRS , styled Lord Leveson until 1846, was a British Liberal statesman...
  
  , Leader of Liberal Party 1875-80
• Hamar Greenwood, Chief Secretary for Ireland 1920-22
• Jo Grimond, Leader of the Liberal Party 1956-67
• Frederick Edward Guest
  Frederick Edward Guest
  Frederick Edward Guest CBE DSO PC , often known as Freddie Guest, was a British politician best known for being Chief Whip of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's Coalition Liberal Party between 1917 and 1921. He was also Secretary of State for Air between 1921 and 1922...
  
  , Chief Whip of the Coalition Liberal party 1917-21
• John Gulland
  John Gulland
  John William Gulland was a British Liberal Party politician.Gulland entered Parliament as Member for Dumfries Burghs at the 1906 general election. He was a junior Lord of the Treasury from 1909 until 1915, when he was promoted to Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury upon the unexpected death...
  
  , Liberal Chief Whip 1915-19
• Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane
  Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane
  Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane KT, OM, PC, KC, FRS, FBA, FSA , was an influential British Liberal Imperialist and later Labour politician, lawyer and philosopher. He was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 during which time the "Haldane Reforms" were implemented...
  
  , Lord Chancellor 1912-15 & (as Labour) 1924
• Lewis Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Colonies 1910-15
• Sir William Harcourt
  William Vernon Harcourt (politician)
  Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt was a British lawyer, journalist and Liberal statesman. He served as Member of Parliament for various constituencies and held the offices of Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Ewart Gladstone before becoming Leader of...
  
  , Chancellor of the Exchequer 1886 & 1892-95, and Leader of the Liberal Party 1896-1898
• Sir Arthur Haworth
  Sir Arthur Haworth, 1st Baronet
  Sir Arthur Adlington Haworth, 1st Baronet , was a British businessman and Liberal politician.He was born in Eccles, Lancashire, and was the eldest son of Abraham Haworth of Altrincham. He was educated at Rugby School before going into business in Manchester. He became a senior partner in James...
  
  , Liberal MP 1906-12
• Jean Henderson
  Jean Henderson
  Jean Henderson was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician.-Date of Birth:According to The Times newspaper obituary of Jean Henderson, she was born on 18 December 1899 but the records of the London School of Economics and Political Science where her papers are kept, note the year of...
  
  , barrister and Liberal candidate
• Mary Honeyball
  Mary Honeyball
  Mary Hilda Rosamund Honeyball is a Member of the European Parliament for the Labour Party representing London. She has been a member of the European Parliament since 2000...
  
  , Labour MEP 2000–present
• Chris Huhne
  Chris Huhne
  Christopher Murray Paul-Huhne, generally known as Chris Huhne is a British politician and cabinet minister, who is the current Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for the Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire...
  
  , Lib Dem MP 2005–present, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change 2010-present
• Lord Jenkins
  Roy Jenkins
  Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...
  
  , Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer 1967-70, Labour Home Secretary 1965-67 & 1974-76, founder and Leader of the Social Democratic Party
  Social Democratic Party (UK)
  The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...
  
  
• Leifchild Jones, 1st Baron Rhayader
  Leifchild Jones, 1st Baron Rhayader
  Leifchild Stratten Leif-Jones, 1st Baron Rhayader PC , known as Leif Jones before his elevation to the peerage in 1932, was a British Temperance movement leader and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...
  
  , Liberal MP 1905-10, 1910–18, 1923-24 & 1929-31
• Nigel Jones
  Nigel Jones, Baron Jones of Cheltenham
  Nigel David Jones, Baron Jones of Cheltenham is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
  
   Lib Dem MP 1992-2005
• Paul Keetch
  Paul Keetch
  Paul Stuart Keetch is an English Liberal Democrat politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Hereford from 1997 to 2010.-Early life:...
  
   Lib Dem MP 1997-2010
• The Rt Rev
  Right Reverend
  The Right Reverend is a style applied to certain religious figures.*In the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain it applies to bishops except that The Most Reverend is used for archbishops .*In some churches with a...
  
   Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester
  Bishop of Chichester
  The Bishop of Chichester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers the Counties of East and West Sussex. The see is in the City of Chichester where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity...
  
   1974-2001
• Charles Kennedy
  Charles Kennedy
  Charles Peter Kennedy is a British Liberal Democrat politician, who led the Liberal Democrats from 9 August 1999 until 7 January 2006 and is currently a Member of Parliament for the Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency....
  
  , Leader of the Liberal Democrats 1999-2006
• Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener
  Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
  Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, ADC, PC , was an Irish-born British Field Marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he died halfway...
  
  , Field Marshal and Liberal Cabinet Minister
• Archie Kirkwood, Lib Dem MP 1983-2005
• Baroness Kramer
  Susan Kramer
  Susan Veronica Kramer, Baroness Kramer is a British Liberal Democrat politician. She was Member of Parliament for Richmond Park from 2005 to 2010, having been an unsuccessful candidate in the London mayoral election in 2000....
  
   Lib Dem MP 2005–10
• Robert Wynn Carrington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire
  Robert Wynn Carrington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire
  Charles Robert Wynn-Carrington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire KG, GCMG, PC, DL, JP , known as the Lord Carrington from 1868 to 1895 and as the Earl Carrington from 1895 to 1912, was a British Liberal politician and aristocrat.-Background and education:Born at Whitehall, London, Lincolnshire was the...
  
  , President of the Board of Agriculture 1905-11
• Gordon Lishman
  Gordon Lishman
  Arthur Gordon Lishman CBE, known as Gordon Lishman is a British social activist, writer and former Director General of Age Concern England.-Career:...
  
  , Director of Age Concern
  Age Concern
  Age Concern was the banner title used by a number of charitable organisations specifically concerned with the needs and interests of all older people based chiefly in the four countries of the United Kingdom....
  
  
• Robert Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn
  Robert Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn
  Robert Threshie Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn GCMG, PC, QC was a British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He served as Lord Chancellor between 1905 and 1912.-Background and education:...
  
  , Lord Chancellor 1905-12
• Thomas Lough
  Thomas Lough
  Thomas Lough was a British Liberal politician.He was born in Ireland to Matthew Lough and Martha Steel of Cavan, and was educated at the Royal School Cavan and at Wesleyan Connexional School, Dublin....
  
  , President of the Board of Education 1905-08
• Henry Lucy
  Henry Lucy
  Sir Henry Lucy JP, was an English journalist and humorist, and a parliamentary sketch-writer acknowledged as the first great lobby correspondent....
  
  , journalist, humourist, and parliamentary sketchwriter
• Ramsay MacDonald
  Ramsay MacDonald
  James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....
  
  , Labour Prime Minister 1924 & 1929-35 (joined when he was private secretary to a Liberal politician)
• Lord MacLennan
  Robert Maclennan, Baron Maclennan of Rogart
  Robert Adam Ross "Bob" Maclennan, Baron Maclennan of Rogart PC is a British Liberal Democrat life peer. He was the last leader of the Social Democratic Party , serving during the negotiations that led to its merger with the Liberal Party in 1988...
  
  , Leader of the SDP 1987-8, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats 1988
• Lord McNally, Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and Minister of State for Justice
• Thomas James Macnamara
  Thomas James Macnamara
  Thomas James Macnamara PC , was a British teacher, educationalist and Liberal politician.-Education:Macnamara was born in Montreal, Canada, the son of a soldier originally from County Clare in Ireland. His family returned to Britain in 1869 and Macnamara was educated first at the Depot School in...
  
  , Liberal MP 1900-24
• Diana Maddock, Lib Dem MP 1993-97
• Paul Marshall
  Paul Marshall (financier)
  Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall is a British investor and philanthropist.He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and holds an MBA from INSEAD Business School....
  
  , Financier and philanthropist
• Charles Masterman, head of the British War Propaganda Bureau 1914-18
• Michael Meadowcroft
  Michael Meadowcroft
  Michael James Meadowcroft is a politician and political affairs consultant in the United Kingdom.He was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Leeds West from 1983 to 1987, and founder of the "continuing" Liberal Party in 1989 following the party's merger with the Social Democratic Party to form the...
  
  , Liberal MP 1983-87
• T. M. Nair
  T. M. Nair
  Taravath Madhavan Nair was an Indian politician and political activist of the Self-Respect Movement from the Madras Presidency. He founded the Justice Party along with Theagaroya Chetty and C. Natesa Mudaliar.- Early life :...
  
  , Indian politician and founder of the Justice Party
  Justice Party (India)
  The Justice Party , officially known as South Indian Liberal Federation, was a political party in the Madras Presidency of British India. The party was established in 1917 by T. M. Nair and Theagaroya Chetty as a result of a series of non-Brahmin conferences and meetings in the presidency...
  
  
• Cecil Norton
  Cecil Norton, 1st Baron Rathcreedan
  Cecil William Norton, 1st Baron Rathcreedan , was a British Liberal Party politician.Norton was the son of William Norton, Rector of Baltinglass, Ireland. He was elected to the House of Commons for Newington West in 1892, a seat he held until 1916, and served under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and...
  
  , Liberal MP 1892-1916
• Charles Wilson, 2nd Baron Nunburnholme
  Charles Wilson, 2nd Baron Nunburnholme
  Charles Henry Wellesley Wilson, 2nd Baron Nunburnholme, CB, DSO, , was a British peer, and one of the heirs to the Thomas Wilson Sons & Co., a Hull-based shipping company that built a near-monopoly over affordable travel packages from Scandinavia and the Baltic.He was the eldest son of Charles...
  
   (1875-1924), British Liberal politician
• William Pringle
  William Pringle (Liberal politician)
  William Mather Rutherford Pringle was a Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom who served as a Member of Parliament from 1910 to 1918 and again from 1922 to 1924....
  
  , Liberal MP 1922-24
• Lord Razzall
  Tim Razzall, Baron Razzall
  Edward Timothy Razzall, Baron Razzall, CBE is a British Liberal Democrat politician.-Early life:Razzall studied at the University of Oxford in the early 1960s, where he also played cricket for the university in 1964....
  
  , Lib Dem peer
• Walter Rea, 1st Baron Rea
  Walter Rea, 1st Baron Rea
  Walter Russell Rea, 1st Baron Rea , was a British merchant banker and Liberal politician.Rea was the son of Russell Rea. He was elected to the House of Commons for Scarborough in 1906, a seat he held until 1918, and served under H. H. Asquith as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1915 to 1916...
  
  , Liberal MP 1906-18, 1923-24 & 1931-35
• Charles Henry Roberts
  Charles Henry Roberts
  Charles Henry Roberts , was a British Liberal politician.-Background:Roberts was the son of Reverend Albert James Roberts, Vicar of Tidebrook, Sussex.-Political career:...
  
  , Liberal MP 1906-18 & 1922-23
• J. M. Robertson
  J. M. Robertson
  John Mackinnon Robertson was a prolific journalist, advocate of rationalism and secularism, and Liberal Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for Tyneside from 1906 to 1918.- Biography :...
  
  , Liberal MP 1906-18
• Thomas Atholl Robertson
  Thomas Atholl Robertson
  Thomas Atholl Robertson was a Scottish fine arts printer and publisher and Liberal politician.-Family and education:...
  
  , fine arts printer; and Chairman of the NLC political committee
• Inga-Stina Robson
  Inga-Stina Robson
  Inga-Stina Robson , often known as Stina Robson, was an Anglo-Swedish political activist.Born to a wealthy family in Stockholm as Inga-Stina Arvidsson, she attended Ölinska Girls' School before becoming a secretary in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs' London office...
  
  , Anglo-Swedish political activist
• Lord Rochester
  Baron Rochester
  Baron Rochester, of Rochester in the County of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1931 for the Liberal and National Labour politician, Ernest Lamb. He served as Paymaster-General from 1931 to 1935. the title is held by his son, the second Baron, who succeeded...
  
  , Lib Dem peer
• Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery
  Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery
  Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, KG, PC was a British Liberal statesman and Prime Minister. Between the death of his father, in 1851, and the death of his grandfather, the 4th Earl, in 1868, he was known by the courtesy title of Lord Dalmeny.Rosebery was a Liberal Imperialist who...
  
  , Prime Minister 1894-95 (resigned in September 1909 in protest at the club becoming a 'hotbed of socialism')
• Paul Rowen
  Paul Rowen
  Paul John Rowen is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Rochdale from 2005 until the 2010 general election, when he was defeated by Labour Party candidate Simon Danczuk.-Early life and career:...
  
  , Lib Dem MP 2005–10
• Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman
  Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman
  Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman was an English shipping magnate. Referred to by his grandson Steven as "a Geordie of Scots descent who ran away to sea at 11, was a master mariner by 21 and founded a shipping line", Runciman wrote several books based on his years at sea...
  
  , Liberal MP 1914-18
• G.W.E. Russell
  George William Erskine Russell
  George William Erskine Russell PC , known as George W. E. Russell, was a British biographer, memoirist and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...
  
  , Liberal MP 1880-85, 1892-95
• Thomas Wallace Russell
  Sir Thomas Wallace Russell, 1st Baronet
  Sir Thomas Wallace Russell, 1st Baronet PC , was an Irish politician and agrarian agitator. Born at Cupar, Fife, Scotland, he moved to County Tyrone at the age of eighteen...
  
  , Unionist MP 1886-1910 & 1911-18
• Herbert Samuel
  Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
  Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...
  
  , Home Secretary 1916 & 1931-32, and Leader of the Liberal Party 1931-35
• C.P. Scott, Editor of the Manchester Guardian 1872-1929
• Brian Sedgemore
  Brian Sedgemore
  Brian Charles John Sedgemore is a former Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom; he was a Member of Parliament from 1974 until 1979, and from 1983 until 2005...
  
  , Labour MP 1974-79 1983-2005
• Ignatius O'Brien, 1st Baron Shandon
  Ignatius O'Brien, 1st Baron Shandon
  Ignatius John O'Brien, 1st Baron Shandon PC, QC , known as Sir Ignatius O'Brien, Bt, between 1916 and 1918, was an Irish lawyer and politician. He served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland between 1913 and 1918....
  
  , Lord Chancellor of Ireland 1913-18
• George Bernard Shaw
  George Bernard Shaw
  George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
  
  , writer
• Cyril Smith
  Cyril Smith
  Sir Cyril Smith, MBE, was a British politician who served as Liberal and Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for the constituency of Rochdale from 1972 until his retirement in 1992.-Early life:...
  
  , Liberal MP 1972-92
• Lord Steel
  David Steel
  David Martin Scott Steel, Baron Steel of Aikwood, KT, KBE, PC is a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats...
  
  , Leader of the Liberal party 1976-88, Lib Dem peer
• Peter Stollery
  Peter Stollery
  Peter Alan Stollery is a former Canadian politician and businessman.-Background:An old Yorkville family, the Stollerys owned a famous furnishings store named Stollery’s, which opened in 1901 in downtown Toronto...
  
  , Canadian Liberal MP 1972-81, Senator 1981-2010
• Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, Liberal & Lib Dem MP 1987-2010
• William Tebb
  William Tebb
  William Tebb was a British businessman and wide-ranging social reformer, particularly known as a anti-vaccinationist and author of anti-vaccination books....
  
  , social reformer
• Lord Teverson
  Robin Teverson, Baron Teverson
  Robin Teverson, Baron Teverson is a Liberal Democrat Whip and currently Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Energy and Climate Change .The son of Crofton Teverson, he was educated at Exeter University...
  
  , Lib Dem MEP 1994-9
• Dylan Thomas
  Dylan Thomas
  Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
  
  , Welsh poet and writer
• Jeremy Thorpe
  Jeremy Thorpe
  John Jeremy Thorpe is a British former politician who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976 and was the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979. His political career was damaged when an acquaintance, Norman Scott, claimed to have had a love affair with Thorpe at a time...
  
  , Leader of the Liberal party 1967-76
• Lord Thurso, Lib Dem MP
• Lord Tordoff, Lib Dem peer
• Lord Tyler
  Paul Tyler, Baron Tyler
  Paul Archer Tyler, Baron Tyler, CBE, DL is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament from February to October 1974 and from 1992 to 2005, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer....
  
  , Liberal and Lib Dem MP 1974 & 1992-2005
• Francis Vane
  Francis Vane
  For the murder exposed by Major Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, see Francis Sheehy-SkeffingtonSir Francis Patrick Fletcher-Vane, 5th Baronet was an early aide of Lord Baden-Powell's and a Scout Commissioner of London before Baden-Powell ousted him from the Scout Association...
  
  , pioneer of the Boy Scout movement
• Lord Wallace of Saltaire
  William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire
  William John Lawrence Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire is a British academic, writer, politician and Lord in Waiting.-Early life:...
  
  , Lib Dem government whip
• Diana Wallis
  Diana Wallis
  Diana Paulette Wallis is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is a Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber. Wallis was first elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and in 2009....
  
   Lib Dem MEP 1999–present
• Henry Webb
  Sir Henry Webb, 1st Baronet
  Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Webb, 1st Baronet was a British Liberal Party politician who was Member of Parliament for Forest of Dean and Cardiff East , and as Junior Lord of the Treasury .- Biography :Educated at Lausanne and Paris, he trained as a mining engineer and became a...
  
  , Liberal MP 1911-18 & 1923-24
• H.G. Wells, writer
• Harry Willcock, anti-ID card campaigner in the 1950s
• Thomas McKinnon Wood
  Thomas McKinnon Wood
  Thomas McKinnon Wood PC was a British Liberal politician. He was a member of H. H. Asquith's cabinet as Secretary for Scotland between 1912 and 1916 and as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between July and December 1916...
  
  , Secretary for Scotland 1912-16
• Richard Younger-Ross
  Richard Younger-Ross
  Richard Alan Younger-Ross is a politician in England. He was the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Teignbridge from 2001 to 2010, having contested the seat in 1992 and 1997, finally winning in the 2001 election...
  
   Lib Dem MP 2001–10

Additionally, the left-wing playwright Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

worked as a waiter at the club in the 1950s, and was fired for daring to interrupt the conversation of several diners.

External links

• Official website
• National Liberal Club Pamphlets Collection University of Bristol Library Special Collections