Star Studded Past

Throughout its long history the tables of Rules have been crowded with writers, artists, lawyers, journalists and actors. As well as being frequented by great literary talents – including Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, John Galsworthy and H G Wells – Rules has also appeared in novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Le Carré, Dick Francis, Penelope Lively and Claire Rayner.

The actors and actresses who have passed through Rules are legion. Down the decades Rules has been an unofficial “green room” for the world of entertainment from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier, and the history of the English stage adorns the walls. The sibling art of the cinema has contributed its own distinguished list of names including Buster Keaton, Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore.

The past lives on at Rules and can be seen on the walls all around you – captured in literally hundreds of drawings, paintings and cartoons. The late John Betjeman, then Poet Laureate, described the ground floor interior as “unique and irreplaceable, and part of literary and theatrical London”.