Conversation clubs …

… Always more to say | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Readers here will know of Leo Damrosch’s The Club, a superb account of the eponymous group of high achievers who met at the Turk’s Head Tavern, Gerrard Street, Soho, during the second half of the eighteenth century. Among others, the group included Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, James Boswell, and, of course, Samuel Johnson. The requirement for membership was that one be good company.