Brooks's was founded in 1764 and its clubhouse, designed by Henry Holland, was completed by 1778. It was built of yellow brick and Portland stone in a Palladian style similar to Holland's early country houses. The main suite of rooms on the first floor consists of the Great Subscription Room, Small Drawing Room and the Card Room. The interiors are neoclassical in style, the Great Subscription Room, with its segmental barrel vault ceiling and large Venetian window, being the chief architectural glory, and used in the eighteenth century for gambling. A Victorian extension was designed by John MacVicar Anderson in the 1880s to accommodate a new, larger dining room with a library above it. Brooks's became the leading Whig club in London and portraits and busts of Charles James Fox abound.

The Society of Dilettanti (founded in 1732) placed its celebrated collection of portraits in Brooks's in 1976. These comprise a group of twenty-three portraits by George Knapton, masterpieces by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West, and other works by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Martin Archer Shee, Lord Leighton, Sir Edward Poynter, John Singer Sargent, Sir James Gunn and John Ward. The tradition of portraiture has been extended by the commission of a new group portrait of forty-two members of the Society, painted by Stuart Pearson Wright and completed in 2020.

Our guide will be FHS member Charles Sebag-Montefiore, who is a Trustee of Brooks's and Joint Secretary of the Society of Dilettanti. Visitors are requested to reach Brooks's between 9.00 and 9.15am. Coffee will be served in the Bar: the tour will start by 9.30am and will take approximately an hour and a half.

COST: £25 (INCLUDES TEA/COFFEE)
LIMIT: 20
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Friday, 6 December 2024

Brooks' Club facade