The Beefsteak club is one of London’s more exclusive. Concealed behind an anonymous door in the insalubrious vicinity of Leicester Square, it occupies one room up a flight of stairs, containing a single long table at which its members (there are only five hundred) lunch or dine. By convention, they do not choose their neighbors but are allocated a place at random by the waiters. Among their number are prime ministers (including the incumbent), academics, authors, diplomats, and a strictly controlled number of lawyers. The sole criterion for membership is an ability to talk and listen well.
Some time ago, the club published a volume, Beefsteak Lives, comprising short biographies of former members written by current ones. Many familiar twentieth-century names are included, as well as some whose lives the reader might be tempted to pass over with less interest. Among the former are Edwin Lutyens, Lord Curzon, A. J. Ayer, Rudyard Kipling, Isaiah Berlin, and Harold Macmillan. Within the latter class falls Sir Ronald Storrs (1881–1955). As the account has it,
Elected only a couple of years before his death, Storrs must have been a sad loss for the club since he was an exceptionally interesting man with a taste and talent for conversation. He was one of the most notable colonial servants of his day, having been Oriental Secretary in Cairo under Kitchener. Subsequently he was successively Governor of Jerusalem and of Cyprus before his final post as Governor of Northern Rhodesia. An eminent
