Times may be hard but the party has started revving up in London's clubland

Anatomy of Britain Pricey to join, cheap to use and based on subscriptions - it's a business model that looks recession proof. But it has hidden fragilities

- Martha Gill

Annabel's in London's Berkeley Square has an annual fee of £3,750.

On the face of it, it is odd that private members' clubs appear to be booming.

The rich are fleeing the capital. Nightlife is dying. The hospitality industry is squeezed by higher taxes, tighter margins, a costof-living crisis and a new generation that apparently never ventures out of doors. Yet members' clubs - still associated in many people's minds with faded leather, dwindling membership and genteel irrelevance - are holding up surprisingly well. "I'm aware of six in development right now," says Jamie Caring, former commercial director at Soho House, a consultant to new clubs, and the son of Richard Caring, the so-called "King of Mayfair". Last year the estate agency Knight Frank reported that "more clubs have opened in the past four years than in the three decades following the 1985 opening of the Groucho Club", and that the "pipeline of prospective openings is the largest it has ever been". There are now more than 133 clubs in London. Among the newest are Lighthouse Social in Fulham, which opened this year, and the House of Koko, which opened in Camden in 2022. But why now?

Clubland flourished until the mid-20th century, when these maleonly, class-based bastions started to look outdated and were displaced by new forms of entertainment. There followed 50 years in the doldrums. But then, in the 1980s, came a wave of "anti-clubs", the first of which was the Groucho, on Dean Street in Soho, founded in 1985 by a group of publishers, which cast off old dress codes, targeted members of the arts and co-opted Stephen Fry to help write the club rules. After that came the relaunched Blacks Club, also on Dean Street, Soho House, Home House and another 60 or so clubs.