Outside World
The Last Eccentric Ball?
One night at Ferrières: 12 December 1972, an invitation you had to read in a mirror, a château lit to look as though it were burning,…
Author
The Editor
Obituaries
Barry Martin (1943-2025)
He spent sixty years making art out of movement — steel rods that crept in and out of their own structures, discs that turned on hidden…
History
A Prince Among Goons
In the winter of 1973, the future King came through our doors in pursuit of the three silliest men in England — and it was, by…
Outside World
The Name Above the Door
For generations, Britain's greatest pubs were remembered not just for their breweries but for the extraordinary personalities behind the bar. From Soho's famously rude Norman Balon…
Outside World
The Aunt Is Not For Sale
Colour-drenched walls, mismatched antiques, wallpapered ceilings and curious collections have returned to fashion under the banner of the "Eccentric Aunt." But is eccentricity really something that…
Outside World
The River's Wife
When Meg Avon married the River Avon in 2023, many dismissed it as performance art. Three years later, after becoming one of the river's most recognisable…
Features
The Del Boy of the Forties
He played every wide boy, tipster, black-marketeer and fast-talking chancer that the British cinema of the rationed years required — and it required a great many.…
Features
The Wider Circle: London's Eccentric Scene
Beyond our own club, the flame of eccentricity burns bright across the capital and the Home Counties. So here is our field guide to eccentric London:…
Features
How Eccentric is Downing Street?
Long before Downing Street acquired its latest occupant, Britain had entrusted its fortunes to an extraordinary procession of tree-fellers, tricyclists, theologians, dandies, yachtsmen and philosophers. From…
Editor at the Roost
Lives and Portraits of Remarkable Characters
A short history of The Eccentric - its editors, its publishers, and why, after more than fifty years and three series, it now goes online
Obituaries
Nic Wing (1958-2016)
At twenty-one, he stood about in the grounds of Knebworth House while Trevor Howard, blacked up and in a tutu, rode a unicycle past him —…
Obituaries
Benedict "Ben" le Vay (1953-2022)
He judged the Club's Greatest British Eccentric of the Year award in 2009, and went on insisting to the end that he was not one himself.…
Obituaries
Christopher Lee (1941–2021)
He was expelled from grammar school over a cricket pavilion that came very close to burning down, and ran away to sea on a tramp steamer.…
Obituaries
Gary Bowman (1952-2020)
He took bets on American football from a call centre in Manchester, moved the whole operation to an island in the Indian Ocean to keep it…
History
The Great Point of the Tower
Pink pigeons on the lawn, a clavichord under the seat of the Rolls, a horse taking tea in the drawing room, and a hundred feet of…
History
The Peer Who Turned Down a Kingdom
Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King - the fable of an Englishman who travels east, is taken for a god and handed a crown,…
History
The Dancing Marquess
He had 30,000 acres, a perfumed motor car and a chapel he turned into a theatre. In six brief years, Henry Cyril Paget spent the lot…
Obituaries
Martin Miller (1946–2013)
He wrote a dating manual at fourteen, before he met his first girlfriend. And sold a hundred copies in a week. He lost twenty million and…
Travel
The Garden That Went to Sleep
Cornwall's Heligan is not merely eccentric. It is the strangest, saddest, most gloriously peculiar estate in that part of Britain - and it grows pineapples in…
Editor at the Roost
Contradiction in Terms
"Eccentric Club?" – "Isn't there a contradiction in terms?"