Athenaeum asks women to join
12 April 2012
The Athenaeum, one of the most exclusive male bastions in Britain, has opened its doors to women for the first time in its 176-year history. Around 25 women have been invited to join the club in Pall Mall, a favourite haunt of bishops, Whitehall mandarins and professors.
Baroness Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University, Julia Neuberger, chief executive of the King's Fund, and the biographer Victoria Glendinning will now be able to share a glass of claret with the 800 male members who include the Archbishop of York, David Hope, and the poet Seamus Heaney.
Members voted by more than two to one in March to allow women to enter the club.
