The India Club is one of the city’s most fascinating post-colonial relics: a bar, lounge and Indian restaurant (one of the UK’s oldest) that’s hardly changed in 65 years. Last summer it was saved from redevelopment, and this week the National Trust opens an on-site exhibition which explores its history and celebrates the survival of a London institution.
Opened on this site in 1964 by the India League, which had campaigned for the former British colony’s independence, the India Club became a first port of call for new arrivals from the subcontinent and a hub for the capital’s burgeoning Asian community. ‘A Home Away from Home: The India Club’ is an immersive oral history consisting of interviews with club regulars over the decades plus archive photos and documents.
You can book in for a series of themed supperclubs and cooking classes too – because history is always better with snacks.