on London SF Meetings

Also: Annual London Events • BSFA • BFS • City Illiterates • Filk • FP • "London Sci-Fi" • Skeptics • ZZ9 • Outside London Links and All-UK Events • Overseas • Contact David Langford (who maintains this page)

When and Where? The "London Group", "London Circle" or just "First Thursday" open sf/fan pub meetings in London, a continuing tradition since 1946, take place on the First Thursday evening of each month. Exceptions are noted below. Meetings run from 4pm or 5pm when people begin to arrive, and continue until closing time at 11pm or later. Since January 2006 the regular venue is the cellar bar of the Melton Mowbray pub, which opens at 6pm (early birds can use the ground-floor bar while waiting). About the Melton Mowbray Street map Exceptions to the First-Thursday schedule Fallback venue London Circle history The Melton Mowbray is on Holborn, not far from Chancery Lane tube station. Address: 18 Holborn, London, EC1N 2LE; phone 020 7405 7077. Paul Treadaway says: "The cellar bar will fit 100 people. It's a Fullers 'Pie and Ale House', so the beer is all Fullers [...] and the food menu funnily enough has several different kinds of pie, along with various non-pie options. Food is served until 8pm, so arrive before then if you want to eat." Warning: the cellar bar and its entrance are easy to miss if you're new to the pub. To get there by London Underground: Take the Central Line to Chancery Lane Station, leave the station using Exit 3: High Holborn (South Side) and continue east along the south side of Holborn for about 100 yards until you find the Melton Mowbray on your right.

London Calendar Until 22 February 2012 or later • Doctor Who Experience, Olympia 2 2 February 2012 • First Thursday 9 February 2012 • Open Day for the MA in Creative Writing (Science Fiction and Fantasy), Middlesex University, Hendon 15 February 2012 • ZZ9 22 February 2012 • BSFA 1 March 2012 • First Thursday 2 March 2012 • British Fantasy Society Open Night, London Bridge 21 March 2012 • ZZ9 5 April 2012 • First Thursday 18 April 2012 • ZZ9 6-9 April 2012 • Olympus 2012 (Eastercon), Heathrow – LiveJournal 3 May 2012 • First Thursday 16 May 2012 • ZZ9 19-20 May 2012 • Kapow! (comics), London Business Design Centre, Islington Further Ahead – omits monthly meetings 22-24 June 2012 • Science Fiction Foundation: SF Criticism Masterclass, London Middlesex University 20 December 2012 • Christmas Meeting at First Thursday pub 14-18 August 2014 • London in 2014 (Worldcon) – bid in progress London Events Pages Blackwells Forbidden Planet Foyles Gosh! Comics Royal Observatory, Greenwich Starfury media cons, often at Heathrow

Fallback Venue

If the Melton Mowbray is closed or otherwise unavailable, the meeting moves to whatever nearby pub can accommodate us. The Sir Christopher Hatton, used for the Christmas 2005 meeting when it was The Goose, is one possibility. Alternatively, Paul Treadaway suggests the 1974-1987 venue The One Tun, on Saffron Hill. "The function room is no longer full of Masons, there's a new extension and garden terrace, and the former homophobic landlord is presumably dead by now, also a lot of people should remember how to get there, and it's quite close if anything should go wrong with the Melton Mowbray." The nearest tube stations are Farringdon (closest), Chancery Lane and Barbican.

• About The One Tun
• About The Sir Christopher Hatton

What Are the Rules?

The meetings are open to all. Informality prevails. There are no talks or events, just a lot of people drinking and chattering. On first Thursdays, sf fans are present from 5pm or even earlier. If nervous, look for reprobates fingering proofs of British SF Association publications or handing out sinister sheets of paper – convention flyers or fanzines.

If you prefer more structured events, with a talk or interview, try the monthly BSFA meetings, held on the fourth Wednesday of each month except for December.

Exceptions to the First-Thursday schedule

Roger Robinson is the "owner" of the meeting as far as the Melton Mowbray is concerned, and in December 2011 he booked the cellar bar for First Thursdays throughout 2012, including Christmas as below.

Christmas Meeting – a second gathering each December, traditionally on the Thursday before Christmas Eve but sometimes a week earlier for greater general convenience. Someone needs to inform the pub well in advance. For 2012, the date booked by Roger Robinson is 20 December.

New Year – if 1 January (the UK New Year's bank holiday) is a Thursday, the January meeting is displaced to 8 January. This last happened in 2009 and will happen again in 2015.

Maundy Thursday – the London meeting happens as usual but is likely to be much depleted if the annual UK Easter SF Convention is far from London.

Extra Meetings may be declared at more or less any time by anyone who can persuade enough people to turn up – to meet some sf celebrity passing briefly through London, for example. It would be wise to check with the pub in advance.

Other London Meetings

Regular/Annual Events in London

• All year • Starfury conventions at Heathrow
• February • Picocon at Imperial College
• Spring • Clarke Award ceremony ... now usually at the start of ...
• Spring • Sci-Fi London film festival
• May/June • BSFA/SF Foundation event, including AGMs [not always held in London]
• August • Frightfest film festival
• October • Sci-Fi London Oktoberfest film festival

British SF Association (BSFA) Open Meetings take place on the fourth Wednesday of the month (subject to change or cancellation if this clashes with other events or public holidays – by default there's no December meeting). Meetings nominally begin at 7pm, with fans likely to be present from 5pm onward. Non-BSFA members are welcome; there is no admission fee. Speakers are announced on the BSFA site and/or BSFA News Weblog, and published – when announcement timing permits – in the current Ansible.

BSFA Venue. From January 2012 until further notice, the meetings are in the cellar bar at The Melton Mowbray (same venue as First Thursdays). See top of page for details and directions. The current organizer and speaker-to-pub is Tony Cullen.

Forthcoming BSFA meetings: Guest – Interviewer
• 22 February 2012 • Liz Williams – Ian Whates
• 27 June 2012 • Tanith Lee

British Fantasy Society Open Meetings are held every few months – see their website for the latest information (check frequently since announcements may be at short notice. I have given up trying to link to specific items on the BFS site because they keep rearranging things and breaking links). All are welcome. These meetings run from 6pm (for an official 7:30pm start time). Locations vary. A popular recent choice is The Mug House, under London Bridge.

Forthcoming BFS London meetings
• 2 March 2012 • British Fantasy Society Open Night, London Bridge

City Illiterates meetings are held every Friday – again, not public holidays etc; Good Friday is the obvious example – "in the Windmill Public House in Mill Street (just south of Oxford Circus, off Conduit Street which is off Regent Street) ... usually there are people there from around 18.00 to around 19.30 ... we're usually in the ground floor back room," writes Brian Ameringen. All welcome, but note that it's a very small and informal gathering, much less obvious than the first-Thursday crowd. These meetings are not listed in the calendar at top right of this page.

Filk Meetings, which seem to be irregular, are documented at Rafe Culpin's website: filk.co.uk. These meetings are not listed in the calendar at top right of this page.

Forbidden Planet signings – follow the link at left for this bookshop's events list. These are not individually listed in the calendar at top right of this page: far too much work! But there's a catchall link up there too.

London Sci-Fi Pub Meet – I didn't hear of this one until 2011 (and its habitués had apparently never heard of the various older meetings), but it seems to have been going for a while as a Saturday afternoon/evening event, monthly at The Shakespeare's Head, Holborn. See title link for dates. These meetings are not listed in the calendar at top right of this page.

London Skeptics in the Pub: UK sceptical movement meetings (there is or was some overlap with sf fandom) are regularly held in London. Dates and times may vary: always check their website. As of July 2010 the current London venue is The Monarch Bar, 40-42 Chalk Farm Road, Camden, London, NW1 8BG. Non-sceptics are welcome; there is a small admission fee. The Skeptic website events page also lists similar meetings in other cities. • Pub details These meetings are not listed in the calendar at top right of this page.

ZZ9 (Hitchhiker) currently has London pub meetings on the third Wednesday of the month – pub details here, general events diary here.

History of London SF Meetings

• 1937: Regular fan meetings begin, Thursdays supposedly being chosen because this was John Carnell's half-day off work. Venue: the J. Lyons teashop at 36/38 New Oxford Street, with occasional switches to the Express Dairy next door at number 40.
• August 1938: Meetings move to "The Flat", Arthur C. Clarke's, Maurice Hanson's and William Temple's home at 88 Gray's Inn Road, also known as "The Ego Centre". A breakway group of non-teetotallers soon began drinking in the nearby Red Bull.
• December 1939: Last meeting at The Flat before its remaining fan inhabitants moved out.
• October 1940: Last known meeting at the Red Bull. See Editorial in Futurian War Digest 2, which indicates a fortnightly rather than weekly schedule by this time. Meetings were irregular, nomadic and poorly documented throughout the rest of the war.
• March 1946: First post-war pub meeting, set up by John Carnell and Ken Chapman, at The Shamrock in Fetter Lane.
• April 1946: The meeting moved across the road to the larger White Horse. As the year continued, the meetings became weekly and the name "The London Circle" emerged. Riffraff like Arthur C. Clarke were now attending.
• December 1949: London Circle overview (Science Fantasy News 4).
• September 1951: L. Sprague de Camp visits the London Circle (Science Fantasy News 9).
• December 1953: Meetings moved from the White Horse (3 Dec) to the Globe in Hatton Garden (10 Dec), to which the popular landlord Lew Mordecai had been transferred. Clarke's 1957 sf collection Tales from the White Hart camouflages the pub names as the White Hart and the Sphere.
• October 1959: The London Circle was formally disbanded (see Skyrack 9), although informal London Group meetings at the Globe continued exactly as before. Some dissidents began rival twice-monthly meetings in private homes as the Science Fiction Club of London, which continued until mid-1968.
• December 1973: A huge crowd gathered at the Globe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of meetings there. But this pub was now scheduled for demolition. (See Checkpoint 39.)
• June 1974: The final first-Thursday meeting at the Globe, plus an extra on 12 June to welcome Isaac Asimov.
• July 1974: First of many first-Thursday meetings at the One Tun, Saffron Hill (near Farringdon tube station).
• January 1987: By now the One Tun had long been perceived as too crowded, and a display of homophobia by the landlord triggered – or provided an excuse for – the search for a new pub. (See Ansible 48.)
• February 1987: Sorties to various London pubs led to the choice of the Wellington on Waterloo Road, opposite Waterloo Station.
• September 1992: Extensive refurbishment of the Wellington drove fans out in search of somewhere else.
• November 1992: The Hamilton Hall on Liverpool Street Station was adopted as least worst of various unsatisfactory choices.
• March 1993: The Hamilton Hall barred fans from its one tolerable area in favour of a private party, and there was a vote to go back ...
• April 1993: Back, with much reduced numbers, to the now redecorated Wellington.
• February 1997: The crowds of nonfans at the Wellington (in its posher incarnation) having swelled to the point of intolerability, there was a march to the smaller but much emptier and friendlier Jubilee. This was the venue until ...
• January 1999: General agreement to move to the nearby Florence Nightingale pub, where our hospitable Jubilee landlord Kevin was transferred on 9 January. This follows the historical precedent of December 1953.
• September/October 1999: Brief return to the Jubilee while the Florence Nightingale was redecorated. The consensus was to make this the basic fallback position while meetings were in this part of London: if for any reason the FN is closed, walk down York Road to the Jubilee instead.
• January 2001: The monthly fourth-Wednesday BSFA meetings moved away from the Florence Nightingale to The Rising Sun pub, Cloth Fair, London EC2.
• December 2001: Kevin left the Florence Nightingale for a pub unsuited to large fan meetings. The new FN management agreed to continue the tradition of giving fans the upstairs room free for first Thursdays.
• June 2002: After complaints and confrontations over a number of Florence Nightingale issues at the 6 June meeting, the landlord cancelled future "fannish first Thursday" bookings of the upstairs room. A new venue is sought; the Jubilee welcomes us in the short term, but a larger pub will surely be needed.
• August 2002: The meeting moved to the Silver Cross in Whitehall (see Ansible 181). Meanwhile the Skeptics meetings moved from the Florence Nightingale – look for the latest information on their website.
• September 2002: The on-line Ansible ran Tony Cullen's photograph of a Silver Cross regular ...
• February 2003. After repeated problems with the Silver Cross, a breakway group moved to The Barley Mow, 50 Long Lane, between Farringdon and Barbican tube stations, which had topped an informal poll for alternative venues.
• March 2003. The Barley Mow was generally adopted.
• January 2004. BSFA meetings moved from The Rising Sun to The White Hart.
• March 2004. Following a February flyer campaign, most First Thursday fans returned to the The Florence Nightingale. The Barley Mow had repeatedly let fans down by double-booking, closing the upstairs room, etc.
• June 2004. BSFA meetings moved from The White Hart to The Star.
• February 2005. The Florence Nightingale was found to have been closed, supposedly for demolition [though the building still remained intact in late 2010]. Fans adjourned to The Jubilee, with tentative plans to return to The Silver Cross in March.
• March 2005. The Silver Cross was used but found unsatisfactory. An Eastercon flyer campaign promoted Walkers of Holborn, unilaterally booked for April onward. Paul Treadaway looks back to 1946: "Walkers is adjacent to where the White Horse once stood on the corner of Norwich Street and Fetter Lane. Furthermore, according to the local CAMRA branch, it was built as a replacement for the White Horse (presumably as part of a deal between the developers and the brewery, whereby the White Horse and other buildings were demolished and an office block built on the site), and is incorporated into the building that now stands on that corner. So the meetings are coming home, in a sense ..."
• April 2005. First meeting in Walkers of Holborn, generally regarded as a great success.
• 7 July 2005. London "7/7" bombings on the first Thursday. Walkers, understandably, did not open; the nearby Melton Mowbray closed in the evening; a small meeting, with six fans present, took place in The Printers Devil across the road from Walkers. (The Printers Devil was one of the pubs surveyed in 1974 as a possible replacement for the Globe.)
• 1 August 2005 (Monday). Extra meeting to mark this year's Glasgow Worldcon, which actually began on the First Thursday date.
• December 2005. Walkers of Holborn was sold in mid-November and closed for refurbishment as a wine bar. The meeting therefore took place in the nearby Melton Mowbray, chosen as the regular First Thursday pub from January 2006. Since it was booked for 22 December, the Christmas 2005 gathering was in the Goose.
• 6 April 2006. On the First Thursday itself, the Melton Mowbray informed fans of a double booking that evening, and the meeting was hastily moved to The Printers Devil – for this month only.
• February 2008. Monthly BSFA meetings moved from The Star – which no longer had an upstairs function room – to The Antelope.
• January 2012. Monthly BSFA meetings moved from The Antelope – whose upstairs function room is in accordance with tradition (see above) being converted to a dining area – to The Melton Mowbray cellar bar. Thus, after twelve years of separation beginning in January 2001, the BSFA and First Thursday meetings are again in the same pub,

Much of the older historical information above is taken from Rob Hansen's history of British fandom, Then.