The bicentenary of the Literary Society

Next month, the Literary Society will celebrate its 200th birthday. The monthly dinner at the Garrick Club will be bigger than usual, but otherwise there will be nothing unusual. The membership has often been distinguished but, as is perhaps typical of English letters, the club has never done anything other than dine. It is not clear that its founding members, who included Wordsworth, ever intended anything in particular by starting it. Most Spectator readers have probably never heard of it.

Past members include Walter Scott, George Crabbe, Matthew Arnold, J. M. Barrie, John Betjeman, Hilaire Belloc, Siegfried Sassoon, John Galsworthy, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Anthony Powell, A. A. Milne and Kingsley Amis. There have been composers (Elgar and Parry), historians such as G. M. Trevelyan and Froude, the architects Butterfield and Herbert Baker, Kenneth Clark (of Civilisation), Harold Nicolson, Alfred Milner the imperialist, Herschel the astronomer, Garnett Wolseley the general, Roy Jenkins, A.