The Travellers Club is a private gentlemen's club situated at 106 Pall Mall in London, United Kingdom. It is the oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs and one of the most exclusive, having been established in 1819. It was described as "the quintessential English gentleman's club" by the Los Angeles Times in 2004. Purpose The original concept of the club, by Lord Castlereagh and others, dates from the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. They envisaged a club where gentlemen who travelled abroad might meet and offer hospitality to distinguished foreign visitors. The original rules of 1819 excluded from membership anyone “who has not travelled out of the British islands to a distance of at least five hundred miles from London in a direct line”. Membership The members of the club's first Committee included the Earl of Aberdeen (later Prime Minister), Lord Auckland (after whom Auckland, New Zealand is named), the Marquess of Lansdowne (who had already served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and later refused office as Prime Minister) and Viscount Palmerston (later Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister). Subsequent members included statesmen and travellers such as Prime Minister George Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Lord John Russell, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, Francis Beaufort (creator of the Beaufort scale), Robert FitzRoy of HMS Beagle, Sir William Edward Parry (explorer of the Northwest Passage), Sir Roderick Murchison (after whom the Murchison crater on the Moon is named) and Sir Wilfred Thesiger. Novelist Anthony Powell was a member, and the club is featured in various guises in the work of Graham Greene, Jules Verne, William Makepeace Thackeray and John le Carré. The club's members include members of the British and foreign royal families, the British Foreign Secretary whilst in office, and various ambassadors to London; a tradition still continued today. Past ambassador members included Prince Talleyrand, for whom the club fitted an extra handrail to the stairs (still there) because of his club foot, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the only member of the club to have been hanged. There is also a special category of membership for particularly distinguished travellers, explorers and travel writers. Such well-known recent members include the late Field Marshal Lord Bramall, and Terry Waite. Its membership remains exclusive, although there are a number of reciprocal arrangements with other clubs throughout the world whose members may use its premises occasionally. Justin