… of warm ale and brandy’. In one corner sat ‘a couple of brawny watermen’; in another, sailors traded tales of their travels – of places so hot they could fry beef on deck, or so cold, they boasted, it had ‘frozen our words in our mouths’ … as people banded together in search of association and friendly social interaction. 7 By the 1720s, one-time-spy turned travel writer, John Macky, described London as having ‘an infinity of clubs or societies for the improvement of learning …