The Myrmidon Club is a

dining club A dining club (UK) or eating club (US) is a social group, usually requiring membership (which may, or may not be available only to certain people), which meets for dinners and discussion on a regular basis. They may also often have guest speakers. ...

elected from the members of

Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of Oxford University, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the ...

, and with a continuous history exceeding 150 years. Until recently, the club was single-sex, and an equivalent club for women, named the Myrmaids, was established following the college's decision to admit women students in 1980. It is now a mixed-gender society.

History

Founded in 1865, it is one of the handful of such clubs with an almost continuous existence from the second half of the 19th century. It once maintained private rooms on the High Street, but in common with most similar clubs it no longer has private accommodation. Describing

Lord Randolph Churchill Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British statesman. Churchill was a Tory radical and coined the term 'Tory democracy'. He inspired a generation of party managers, created the National Union of ...

's membership of the Club towards the end of the 1860s, T.H.S. Escott wrote: :"There is a certain monotony in the chronicle of the doings at these feasts. In all cases there are the same narratives of proctors' invasions, youthful concealments in coal-cellars, varied sometimes by the incarceration of indiscreet waiters in pantries or ice safes ; or encounters with proctors and bull-dogs, tempered by conflicts with the city police." L. E. Jones in his memoir described a dinner which (as a member of Balliol) he attended as a guest in his first term. He drank 24 glasses of port, was rescued from the shrubbery and was carried to bed by his friends: :"The miseries of that spinning night and of the next day have preserved me for life from drunkenness ... Not even the killing of Hector by the Myrmidons, in Shakespeare's version of that tragedy, could have been, since it was swifter, so brutal a handling as I got from the Myrmidons of Merton. Yet, manners being manners, I wrote a note to say how much I had enjoyed myself."

Traditions

The club takes its name from the legendary warriors commanded by

Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...

, as described in Homer's

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...

. The Club has storage facilities in College, but in common with similar college dining societies is intermittently out of favour with the college authorities. Its colours are purple, gold and silver. Members wear ties with stripes of these colours.

Popular references

The Club is thought to be the model for the Junta, the fictional club in

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturday ...

's ''

Zuleika Dobson ''Zuleika Dobson'', full title ''Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story'', is the only novel by English essayist Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford published in 1911. It includes the famous line "Death cancels all engageme ...

'', of which the Duke of Dorset was for some time the sole member. Beerbohm was himself Honorary Secretary of the Myrmidons.

Notable members

Lennox Berkeley Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley (12 May 190326 December 1989) was an English composer. Biography Berkeley was born on 12 May 1903 in Oxford, England, the younger child and only son of Aline Carla (1863–1935), daughter of Sir James Char ...

George Binney Sir (Frederick) George Binney ( DSO) (23 September 1900, Epsom, Surrey–1972 JerseyObituary: S ...

* Brigadier Lorne Campbell VC *

* Sir George Clutton, HM Ambassador to Poland * John Edward Bernard Hill, MP for South Norfolk * Andrew Irvine * Sir Harold Kent, HM Procurator General and Treasury Solicitor''The Merton College Register, Volume II (1891-1989)'' (1990) * Sir George Mallaby *

Reginald Maudling Reginald Maudling (7 March 1917 – 14 February 1979) was a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 to 1964 and as Home Secretary from 1970 to 1972. From 1955 until the late 1960s, he was spoken of as a prospecti ...

Airey Neave Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, (;) (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) from 1953 until his assassination in 1979. During World War II he was the first British prisoner-of-war ...

Anthony Nuttall Anthony David Nuttall (25 April 1937 – 24 January 2007) was an English literary critic and academic. Nuttall was educated at Hereford Cathedral School, Watford Grammar School for Boys and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied both Classic ...

Colin Sleeman Stuart Colin Sleeman (10 March 1914 – 14 June 2006) was a British judge. As an Assistant Judge Advocate General, he was appointed as senior counsel for the defence in two trials of Japanese soldiers accused of war crimes held in Singapore af ...

, war crimes defence counsel and judge *

Reginald Turner Reginald Turner (2 June 1869 – 7 December 1938) was an English author, an aesthete and a member of the circle of Oscar Wilde. He worked as a journalist, wrote twelve novels, and his correspondence has been published, but he is best known as on ...

Edward Vaizey Edward Henry Butler Vaizey, Baron Vaizey of Didcot, (born 5 June 1968) is a British politician, media columnist, political commentator and barrister who was Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries from 2010 to 2016. A memb ...

Angus Wilson Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, CBE (11 August 191331 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ''The Middle Age of ...

Averil Gardner, ''The Early Years of Angus Wilson'', in ''Twentieth Century Literature'', 1983, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 151-161

References

{{Reflist *''Merton College Register (1891-1989)'' (printed for private circulation, 1990)

External links