The Blades Club is a fictional private club located in Park Street, Mayfair in central London in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. The club allows gambling, mainly high-stakes card games, but is more celebrated for its gourmet catering. Prospective members must show a net worth of at least 100,000 British pounds, in cash or gilt-edged securities, before they can be considered for admission.

When members pay for their meals, it is the custom to give change only in newly minted coins.

Auric Goldfinger was a member of the Blades Club.

Known members of the club have included Sir Hugo Drax (in Moonraker), Auric Goldfinger (as mentioned by M in (novel) Goldfinger) and M. The Chairman of Blades is Lord Basildon. M regularly lunches at Blades and occasionally dines there. James Bond is an occasional guest at the club of his boss.

In the James Bond film Die Another Day, 007 confronts villain Gustav Graves in the fencing room of a London private gentlemen’s club, though references to this being called (appropriately) Blades were dropped from the final film.

In Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, Blades is mentioned in passing in a cross-reference to Fleming’s novels, as the club where the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service plays cards with “some of the men at the Very Top.”

See also:

• Organisations