The Duke of Edinburgh, who died on Friday 9 April this year, belonged to the now infamous mens-only group, the Thursday Club. Immortalised in The Crown, it was an ‘eating and drinking’ club, reportedly dedicated to ‘absolute inconsequence’ (and where more drinking than eating almost certainly went on). They would unite for Thursday lunches at Wheeler’s oyster and seafood restaurant on Old Compton Street in Soho and it was where Prince Philip – surrounded by fellow bon viveurs – would let his hair down.
The club would reportedly take place on a separate floor in the restaurant, away from the general public, with six circular tables set up in a lavish dining room. A royal source told the Sun : ‘An endless supply of wine, followed by port and brandy, plus the best cigars, ensured that lunch went on well into the night, with the bibulous guests becoming more louche – and increasingly frisky – as the hours went by.’
In 1996, the late journalist Miles Kington wrote in the Independent : ‘I think I am probably one of the last surviving members of the old Thursday Club, the gang of cronies that the Duke of Edinburgh used to gather round him in the 1950s to have a bit of fun away from his serious life at Buckingham Palace.’
On an average night, according to Kington, there would be 10 or 15 members in attendance. Members included the Marquis of Milford Haven, Prince Philip’s cousin and later to be the best man at his wedding; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Philip’s uncle; Hungarian author Arthur Koestler; photographer of the Bright Young Things, Cecil Beaton; poet John Betjemen; Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen; Larry Adler ‘playing his mouth organ in the corner’ and occasionally the Kray twins might even show up. In addition, there were the well-known faces of actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov as well as – quite scandalously – Kim Philby, then working as a British intelligence officer before he was exposed as a Soviet spy.
It has been claimed Philip was first introduced to the club by his good friend Baron Nahum, a society photographer, with the help of the actor James Robertson Justice and several others. A royal source told the Sun: ‘Baron was a fast-living photographer, of Italian-Libyan parentage, who had first met Philip on a photo-shoot at Broadlands, the Hampshire home of Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten.
‘Baron founded the Thursday Club and often hosted parties in his Mayfair flat, where blue-bloods met showgirls, and introduced Philip to this bohemian circle.’ One of the few photographs in existence of the club’s lunches, was one taken by Nahum in November 1947, at a gathering to toast Philip on his engagement to the future Queen.
Of Prince Philip’s stag night, a photograph of a seating plan also survives. They reportedly dined on ‘foie gras, turtle soup, mixed grill and crêpes suzette’. On the menu was also a printed verse by Samuel Johnson, it read: ‘Marriage is the best state for a man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state...'
Philip’s partner-in-crime Australian Mike Parker, who would later be appointed his equerry, was another frequent diner at the Thursday Club. Similarly, Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair – who introduced Christine Keeler to the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo – is thought to have stopped by the Thursday Club and is believed to have sketched Prince Philip, but that is where the friendship ended.
In a Times obituary this weekend, Max Hastings, who confessed he was the ‘last person left alive who once attended a Thursday Club meeting’ wrote that the ‘alcohol consumed would have floated a frigate’ but dismissed the idea that many girls were present. Given the absence of photographs and with him being the singular remaining survivor, we’ll have to take his word for it.
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