Mayfair Book Groupette

Location: The Green Room, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair Attendees: • Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde) • Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary) • Lord E. Northcote • Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian) • Hugo Van Steyn • India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist) • Max Duclos (Collector) • Pascal (Afghan hound, unusually restless, attempting to gnaw at a recently … Read more

Location: The Red Room, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair Attendees: • Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde) • Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary) • Lord E. Northcote • Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian) • Hugo Van Steyn (Heckle’s) • India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist) • Max Duclos (Collector) • Pascal (Afghan hound) Book Discussed: Fringes of Glory: Moustache Fashions … Read more

We cordially thank Ms d’Abernon, Mr Wethercombe, and Lord Northcote for their spirited contributions to what has become, in recent weeks, the most fastidiously mannered quarrel to grace our Letters page since the Great Footnote Dispute of 2024. While we appreciate the high style (and the canine diplomacy) on display, we must remind correspondents that … Read more

Sir, It is with a heavy but disciplined heart that I write to draw a discreet curtain across the recent exchange between Mr Wethercombe and Ms d’Abernon regarding the Mayfair Book Groupette. As a long-serving member of this most esteemed of societies, I can assure your readers that the Groupette does not, as Mr Wethercombe … Read more

Sir, I am gratified that my modest literary debut, the novel Waiting for Pascal, has generated such spirited correspondence, even from within the ranks of its ostensible inspiration. Ms. d’Abernon’s letter, while exquisitely phrased, rather confirms my central thesis: that the Mayfair Book Groupette’s admissions process is a byzantine pageant designed less to identify potential … Read more

Sir, I read with unmatched incredulity your recent review of Lionel Wethercombe’s novel Waiting for Pascal, in which an ancient Society, the Mayfair Book Groupette – thinly disguised as “The Bibliotemporal Circle”, is depicted as some sort of social-literary oubliette where hopeful applicants moulder indefinitely in silk-lined purgatory. Permit me to correct several grave misconceptions. … Read more

By Lionel Wethercombe If The Devil Wears Prada had been rewritten by a thwarted member of the London Library after three years on the Mayfair Book Groupette’s waiting list, the result might look something like Lionel Wethercombe’s debut, Waiting for Pascal. The premise is simple, and almost certainly autobiographical: a man applies to join “a … Read more

Date: 30th August 2025 Prepared by: Fiona d’Abernon (Acting Secretary) Subject: Expulsion of Mr. Conrad Smithe for Misrepresentation of Reading 1. Background At the recent meeting of the Mayfair Book Groupette, convened to discuss The Cartographer’s Melancholy by Jeroen van Holt (limited edition, hand-printed on laid paper with uncut fore-edges), it became apparent that member … Read more