Features

Manners, Monkeys and a Moat of Tea

He emptied his grandfather's shed to build an imaginary chocolate-biscuit machine. Forty years on, he is still doing much the same thing…

The Rakes' Progress

One of them wrote a Reformation rap battle between Luther and Leo X. The other canoed under the Rialto singing "Greensleeves" until…

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…

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…

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,…

The Eccentric Charigs

Wes Anderson had The Royal Tenenbaums. The Eccentric Club knew the Charigs — meet a court jeweller dozing under the club clock,…

The Fabulous Czainskis

He stuffed a dead pigeon and got the legs on backwards. She waded into the river at Hebden Bridge to rescue a…

The Six Faces of Lucy Freud

She spent a year at art school under her married name, saying nothing. Then she turned out the lights.

Dare To Be Eccentric?

In defence of originality in an age of conformity