Nobody's Friends

[4] In the late 1880s Nobody’s occasionally met at the Freemasons' Tavern, which served as a meeting place for a variety of notable organisations from the eighteenth century until it was demolished to make way for the Connaught Hotel in 1909.

[9][10] A Nobody's menu from 1891 shows a club dinner at the Hotel Metropole, London consisting of ten or more courses, standard at that time in formal Victorian dining.

After dinner, we discuss the admission of women to membership and some very odd backwoodsman’s views are expressed, notably by three former headmasters – Frank Fisher, Tom Howarth and Oliver van Oss.

Lord Lloyd had sent a letter of influence in the Peter Ball case to Archbishop Carey prefaced with the phrase "May I presume on a brief acquaintanceship at dinners of Nobody's Friends?

The IICSA counsel pointed out that the Daily Mail had once described it as "centred on a strong core of bishops, ex-Tory ministers and former military top brass, a highly secretive, all-male group representing Britain's most entrenched professions and institutions."

[18][19] Stephen Parsons commented in an influential blog, following the IICSA hearing, that the forum Nobody’s Friends provided for influence in the Peter Ball case suggested a “toxic masculinity” in the Church of England.

When Bishop John Bickersteth once revealed that his appointment to Bath and Wells followed his being ‘spotted’ at a Nobody’s dinner, we began to get the feeling that the values of our church may incline towards corporate and institutional interests rather than a personal morality based on the Sermon on the Mount.