Reform Club - Appearances in Popular Culture and Literature

Appearances in Popular Culture and Literature

The Reform Club features in Anthony Trollope's novel Phineas Finn (1867). This eponymous main character becomes a member of the club and there acquaints Liberal members of the House of Commons, who arrange to get him elected to an Irish parliamentary borough. The book is one of the political novels in the Palliser series, and the political events it describes are a fictionalized account of the build-up to the Second Reform Act (passed in 1867) which effectively extended the franchise to the working classes.

The club is used fictionally in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days; the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, is a member of the Reform Club who sets out to circumnavigate the world on a bet from his fellow members, beginning and ending at the club.

Michael Palin, following his fictional predecessor, also began and ended his televised journey around the world in 80 days at the Reform Club. The Club, like other senior London clubs, has a dress code requiring gentlemen to wear a jacket and tie; Palin preferred to remain casually dressed and, not having prepared himself properly, he was not permitted to enter the building to complete his journey as had been his intention, so his trip ended on the steps outside.

Victorian publisher Norman Warne is shown visiting the Reform Club in the 2006 film Miss Potter.

The club has been used as a location in a number of films, including the fencing scene in the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day., "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), "The Man Who Haunted Himself" (1970), Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man!" (1973), "Quantum of Solace" (2008) and "Sherlock Holmes" (2009).