Two well known members at the Gargoyle Club were the spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Luke recounts a night of serious drinking where Maclean walked between tables loudly proclaiming 'I am the English Hiss' (i.e the American spy Alger Hiss) and after a few more drinks 'I work for Uncle Joe'. No-one took the slightest interest assuming his behaviour was just pour épater. At the time he was head of the American desk at the Foreign Office.
Luke is unclear as to precisely when it finished but a rock and roll night in 1956 was considered a sort of death knell. The evidence of there being members like Ginsberg, Corso and Terry Southern indicates that it may have struggled on into the 1960s. Michael Luke,author of David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years (1991) was the son of Sir Harry Luke, friend of Baron Corvo. It is unlikely had Corvo still been around in the 1930s he would have been a member ( 4 guineas a year). More members from Michael Laws roll-call to come..
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