RSG Talk with Guest Speaker, Philip Stephens
Wednesday 30th September at 12.30 | The Drawing Room | £20.00
The Romney Street Group (also known as RSG) is a British current affairs and lunch club. The RSG was founded in 1917 as an early form of think tank to generate policies for the post war reconstruction of Britain for the Lloyd George government. The first chairman was Thomas Jones, who was Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet under four successive prime ministers. According to a 2007 article in Twentieth Century British History, “dining groups were amongst the most common of [informal] networks; and the Romney Street Group, which has been existence in various guises since 1917, is eminent amongst them.” Since the 1960s the RSG has hosted lunchtime talks during the academic or legal terms. Held at the Athenaeum Club since 1984, and preceded by an informal sandwich lunch, the 20-minute talk by a guest speaker is followed by 40 minutes of Q&A, all under the Chatham House Rule.
This is the third term that meetings have also been held at The Rag. Members of The Rag are welcome to join the informal sandwich lunch and meeting, and would be welcome to any at the Athenaeum.
If you are interested in attending this meeting at The Rag, please contact the programme secretary, Wendy Pollecoff: [email protected] by Sunday, 28th September, so that the sandwiches can be ordered. The charge to attend any meeting is £20 charge paid in cash on the day.
Philip Stephens is a writer, commentator and historian. His latest book These Divided Isles: Britain and Ireland, Past and Future, was published in August 2025.
Stephens is a Contributing Editor at the Financial Times where he was previously Director of the Editorial Board and Chief Political Commentator. He is an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation and a member of the steering group of the Anglo-French Colloque. He is a Richard von Weizsacker fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin. He is a frequent speaker and moderator at international conferences on European, transatlantic and global affairs, and offers analysis and advice to business leaders on geopolitical risk. He has spoken and moderated in recent years at events hosted by Chatham House, the Xiangshan Forum, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Aspen Italia, the German Marshall Fund, the Asan Forum, the Stockholm China Forum, the Franco-British Colloque and the Munich Security Conference.
He has won the three main prizes in British political journalism, being named as winner of the David Watt prize for Outstanding Political Journalism, as Political Journalist of the Year by the UK Political Studies Association, and as Political Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. He is the author of Britain Alone: the Path from Suez to Brexit, published by Faber in London and New York in 2021, Politics and the Pound, a study of British economic and European policy, and of Tony Blair, the Price of Leadership, a biography of the former prime minister. He travels widely and is a frequent broadcaster.
Philip Stephens was educated at Wimbledon College and at Worcester College, Oxford, where he took a degree in modern history.