The Gridiron Club (Oxford University)

Last updated

The Gridiron Club, popularly called The Grid, is a dining club open to male and female students [1] at the University of Oxford.

Contents

History

The club was founded in 1884 and, as with other beefsteak clubs of the 18th and 19th centuries, the traditional grilling gridiron is the club's symbol, which appears on the club tie (white gridirons on an Oxford blue field).

Notable former members of the club include John le Carré, Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath, Lord Michael Pratt (a former Secretary of the Grid), David Cameron (President of the Grid 1987–1988), Boris Johnson, George Osborne and Jacob Rees-Mogg. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Sports journalist Sally Jones and Lord Salisbury's daughter Lady Georgiana Campbell both gained notoriety by separately standing for election to the then all-male club (Lady Georgiana famously doing so in male clothing). [6]

References have been made to the Gridiron Club in many works, including Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited , Compton MacKenzie's Sinister Street and Ferdinand Mount's Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes. [7]

Club Operation

The name of any prospective member is entered into 'The Book'. Current members may subsequently sign in approval of the proposed.[ citation needed ] If any current member disapproves of the proposed, they are given the opportunity to 'black ball' with proper justification.[ citation needed ] Members of other clubs, such as The Bullingdon Club, the Piers Gaveston Society and The Stoics, are usually chosen from among existing Grid members. [8] [9]

Day-to-day management is handled by an undergraduate committee consisting of a President, Treasurer, Secretary and a small number of other members 'without portfolio'.

The Gridiron has a board of trustees, the members of which are usually former members of the club. In addition, there is at least one Senior Member who supervises the running of the club and is invariably a don at the University of Oxford. Past Senior Members of the Grid include the distinguished historians Jeremy Catto of Oriel College and Maurice Keen of Balliol.

The Gridiron's reciprocal club at the University of Cambridge is the University Pitt Club.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Rees-Mogg</span> British journalist (1928–2012)

William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg was a British newspaper journalist who was Editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981. In the late 1970s he served as High Sheriff of Somerset, and in the 1980s was Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and Vice-Chairman of the BBC's Board of Governors. He was the father of the politicians Sir Jacob and Annunziata Rees-Mogg.

Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL, is a British writer, novelist, and columnist for The Sunday Times, as well as a political commentator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bullingdon Club</span> Exclusive society at Oxford University

The Bullingdon Club is a private all-male dining club for Oxford University students. It is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms. The club selects its members not only on the grounds of wealth and willingness to participate but also by reference to their education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beefsteak Club</span> Several 18th- and 19th-century male dining clubs in Britain and Australia

Beefsteak Club is the name or nickname of several 18th- and 19th-century male dining clubs in Britain and Australia that celebrated the beefsteak as a symbol of patriotic and often Whig concepts of liberty and prosperity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University Pitt Club</span> Private members club of the University of Cambridge

The University Pitt Club, popularly referred to as the Pitt Club, the UPC, or merely as Club, is a private members' club of the University of Cambridge. It was formerly male-only, and has admitted women since 2017.

Terminological inexactitude is a phrase introduced in 1906 by British politician Winston Churchill. It is used as a euphemism or circumlocution meaning a lie, an untruth, or a substantially correct but technically inaccurate statement.

The Chew Valley is an affluent area in North Somerset, England, named after the River Chew, which rises at Chewton Mendip, and joins the River Avon at Keynsham. Technically, the area of the valley is bounded by the water catchment area of the Chew and its tributaries; however, the name Chew Valley is often used less formally to cover other nearby areas, for example, Blagdon Lake and its environs, which by a stricter definition are part of the Yeo Valley. The valley is an area of rich arable and dairy farmland, interspersed with a number of villages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Bone</span> English anarchist and publisher

Ian David Bone is an English anarchist and publisher of anarchist newspapers and tabloids, such as Class War and The Bristolian. He has been involved in social campaigns since the 1960s, including the 2001 "Vote Nobody" election campaign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hinton Blewett</span> Human settlement in England

Hinton Blewett is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Wells and 15 miles (24.1 km) south of Bristol on the northern slope of the Mendip Hills, within the designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and in the Chew Valley near the source of the River Chew. The parish has a population of 308.

Dylan John Jones OBE is an English journalist and author. He served as editor of the UK version of men's fashion and lifestyle magazine GQ from 1999 to 2021. In June 2023 Jones became the new editor-in-chief of the London Evening Standard which had been without a full-time editor since the previous October.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Rees-Mogg</span> British politician (born 1969)

Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg is a British politician, broadcaster and member of the Conservative Party who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset from 2010 to 2024. He served as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2019 to 2022, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency from February to September 2022 and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from September to October 2022. Rees-Mogg previously chaired the eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) from 2018 to 2019 and has been associated with socially conservative views.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ston Easton</span> Human settlement in England

Ston Easton is a linear village and civil parish in the English county of Somerset. It is 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Bath and 7 miles (11 km) north of Shepton Mallet. It forms part of the Mendip district and lies along the A37 road 11 miles (18 km) south of the cities of Bristol and Bath and to the west of the town of Midsomer Norton. The parish includes the hamlet of Clapton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piers Gaveston Society</span> University of Oxford dining club

The Piers Gaveston Society, or Piers Gav for short, is a dining club founded in 1977 at the University of Oxford. It is named in honour of Piers Gaveston, favourite of King Edward II of England. In recent years, parties run by the society have been the focus of increased tabloid news coverage revolving around lurid allegations of debauched behaviour, such as Piggate.

ConservativeHome is a British centre-right news website and events company. It was first established by Tim Montgomerie in 2005 with the aim of arguing for a broad conservative spectrum, which is serious about both social justice and a fair competitive economy. A second aim of the blog is to represent grassroots Conservatives, and is independent of, but supportive of, the Conservative Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annunziata Rees-Mogg</span> British Conservative politician (born 1979)

Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg is a British freelance journalist whose focus is finance, economics, and European politics. She was a Brexit Party, then Conservative politician, during 2019 and into early 2020. Rees-Mogg has been a leader writer for The Daily Telegraph, deputy editor of MoneyWeek, and editor of the European Journal, a Eurosceptic magazine owned by Bill Cash's think tank, the European Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Lovegrove</span> British civil servant

Sir Stephen Augustus Lovegrove is a British civil servant who was the UK National Security Adviser from March 2021 to September 2022. He led the Shareholder Executive from 2007 to 2013, and then had permanent secretary roles at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Ministry of Defence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Research Group</span> Eurosceptic faction within UK Conservative Party

The European Research Group (ERG) is a research support group and caucus of Eurosceptic Conservative Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom. In a Financial Times article in 2020, the journalist Sebastian Payne described the ERG as "the most influential [research group] in recent political history".

The Traditional Britain Group (TBG) is a British far-right pressure group that describes itself as traditionalist conservative and "home to the disillusioned patriot". It was founded in 2001 by Gregory Lauder-Frost, with Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley as its president. Sudeley was still in office when he died in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominic Johnson, Baron Johnson of Lainston</span> British financier and politician

Dominic Robert Andrew Johnson, Baron Johnson of Lainston,, is a British financier, hedge fund manager and politician, the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Somerset Capital Management, who has served as co-chairman of the Conservative Party since November 2024, alongside Nigel Huddleston. He was a Minister of State in the Department for Business and Trade under Rishi Sunak, having served in the department during the tenure of Liz Truss. Johnson has given more than £250,000 to the Conservative Party, and was its vice-chairman from 2016 to 2019.

References

  1. ↑ "Homepage". Gridiron Club website. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  2. ↑ "Behind and Iron Curtain". The Independent. 3 August 1993. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  3. ↑ "Obituary". The Telegraph. 8 September 2007. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  4. ↑ Mount, Harry (30 April 2010). "My Cousin David Cameron". The Evening Standard. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  5. ↑ Ashcroft, Michael (10 September 2019). Jacob's Ladder: The Unauthorised Biography of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Biteback Publishing. ISBN   978-1-78590-531-5.
  6. ↑ "The Saturday Profile Viscount Cranborne, Conservative Peer: The last true blue blood" . The Independent. 21 November 1998. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  7. ↑ Mount, Ferdinand. Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes, The Sunday Times , 27 April 2008
  8. ↑ "Lord Bath, Memoirs". lordbath.co.uk. 1999. Retrieved 9 October 2011.[ failed verification ]
  9. ↑ "A GQ student guide to Oxford University". gq-magazine.co.uk. 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.