Britain's What's On Event Guide

The ‘most honest hearted, real good men’: Sir John Vanbrugh and the Ki

Ophelia Field, author of The Kit-Cat Club, and Vanbrugh biographer Rory Fraser discuss the Club’s under-appreciated centrality to Vanbrugh’s eclectic career and to British culture. This talk is one of a lecture series held monthly.

Vanbrugh joined publisher Jacob Tonson’s Kit-Cat Club soon after The Relapse debuted on the London stage in late 1696, remained a member until the Club dissolved in the 1720s, and retained a deep fondness for its fellowship and friendships until the end of his life. Several key steps in his surprising career depended upon the patronage of Kit-Cat aristocrats, and this was no accident.

Field, author of The Favourite: Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, published her group biography of the Kit-Cats in 2008 – the first in-depth modern study of the Club – and argued that its far-reaching role in British politics and culture had been previously overlooked. Fraser’s forthcoming biography of Vanbrugh will extend this argument, showing how important it was for Vanbrugh to count himself among the Kit-Cat wits, and to pursue the patriotic cultural mission he shared with its other creative members.

Tying the story of the Club’s evolution and Vanbrugh’s involvement over several decades to the Stowe landscape, as developed by Kit-Cat member Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, this authors-in-conversation event will surface historical connections, conundrums and heated rivalries.