Revolution as men-only club Pratt’s allows women to join
HE’S only just moved into Chatsworth, the palatial family seat in Derbyshire which boasts more than 300 rooms. But that’s evidently not enough for the Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Devonshire’s only son and heir.
Yesterday, I can reveal, he instituted a revolution at Pratt’s, the splendidly named gentlemen’s club which his family has owned since 1937, by announcing that, ‘with immediate effect’, not only would women be admitted as guests but would also be eligible for membership.
Explaining this decision—– in a letter to members sent by club secretary, Colonel Sir Alexander ‘Sandy’ Malcolm, Bt — the 53-year-old Earl asserts that ‘extending membership to women is a positive, necessary and evolving change to enhance and invigorate the club’.
He adds he discussed the plan with the chairman — former Tory minister Nicholas [now Lord] Soames — and the committee ‘and others, who I am pleased to say support this change’.
Alas, his enthusiasm does not appear to be widely shared within the club, which occupies rooms in a basement in St James’s, London, and which partly inspired the fictional Blades — 007’s club in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
‘This email arrived overnight — there has been no consultation with the membership and no ballot,’ one member tells me, branding the change ‘a disgrace’. He adds: ‘It will be the end of Pratt’s as we know it. Lots of people will resign or simply stop coming in, which amounts to the same thing. And I happen to know that women have not been pressing for it. At the moment, they can come in as guests for lunch.’
The member adds that ‘ Bill Burlington’ — as the Earl opted to be known during his photographic career — ‘ has never “got” Pratt’s’, where, by longstanding tradition, stewards were always known as George, regardless of their baptismal name. Until, that is, the arrival of the first female steward, Margaret Ouroux — who became ‘Georgina’.
Traditionalists fear more radical developments. ‘There was a rumour Burlington wanted the place to became a version of 5 Hertford Street,’ a member shivers, referring to Robin Birley’s Mayfair haunt, which boasts a nightclub, Loulou’s, below. ‘Thankfully, that hasn’t happened — so far.’