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About The Club

The Rotary Club of London, Club No. 50 in Rotary International, is the premier Rotary Club in Britain, being the first to have been chartered outside North America.

London is one of four Clubs in Britain and Ireland to be founded in 1911 -  the others being Dublin (who actually were the first to convene a meeting but took longer to be chartered), Manchester and Belfast. Next Rotary year (2011-2012) is our centenary year, and therefore also the centenary of Rotary in Europe.

The London Club is unique in that it covers the whole of the capital, yet is only one of about 80 in District 1130 (“Rotary in London”), which represents all Rotary Clubs in the Greater London region. The Club maintains close relations with the District, and with other Clubs in the District.

The London Club combines experience with youthful enterprise. Our present No. 1 Member, Albert Kunz, was inducted in 1952, and around 20 new Members are currently joining the Club each year. Our membership includes politicians from all major parties, numerous Ambassadors and High Commissioners, religious leaders from various faiths, and leading figures from the arts, industry, commerce and the professions.

The Rotary Club of London is a Member of the R5 Group of European Capital City Clubs alongside The Hague, Brussels, Paris and Luxembourg.

The Club plays an active part in supporting the object of Rotary, which is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
1. the development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
2. high ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
3. the application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life; and
4. the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

Although the Club draws its membership from the whole of the capital, its constitutional home territory is the City of London and Holborn, and the Club maintains close relations with the worlds of finance and the law. As a Member of the Leonardo Association of European Rotary Clubs which supports rising stars in the worlds of science, arts and crafts, the London Club hosted the 2005 ceremony at the historic Goldsmiths Hall in the City of London when the annual Leonardo da Vinci Prize was awarded to Danish silversmith Sidsel Dorph-Jensen, and held a gala dinner in the Great Hall at Lincoln’s Inn.

The London Club is very involved with community projects, including support for Oak Lodge School for profoundly deaf children in Balham; St George’s School in West London; and children’s hospices and hospitals in the region.

Because of its international membership and frequent visits by Rotarians from all over the world, the London Club has a particular focus on international charity projects and on promoting international dialogue and understanding. Two events in the Club’s annual fundraising calendar, the Charity Golf Day and the International Gala Dinner, deliver five-figure support for children’s charities in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

The London Club meets for lunch every working Monday at the English Speaking Union, Dartmouth House, 37 Charles Street near Green Park, where it welcomes current and prospective Rotarians from all over the world. These lunches are habitually addressed by a very high calibre of speakers, including in recent years the former Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Booth, QC, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, filmmaker Lord Puttnam, Cardinal Walter Kasper and Princess Michael of Kent, as well as the Club’s own honorary Members the Duke of Edinburgh, Baroness Margaret Thatcher and broadcaster Esther Rantzen.

The Club’s official quarterly magazine, The London Rotarian, was first published in October 1916 and is believed to be the oldest Rotary magazine in the world. It aims to include articles by and about serious thinkers, making a contribution to the debate about our society, the world we live in, and the role of voluntary service. Active Club Member Sir Sigmund Sternberg, famed for his unstinting efforts to build bridges between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, was included alongside Sir Winston Churchill and President John F. Kennedy in Rotary International’s Centennial List of 100 noted Rotarians. The President of the London Club in the current Rotary year 2010-11 is Kiyohiko Tanaka.