The Reform Club on Pall Mall owes its existence to a political grudge.

When the Tories founded the Carlton Club in 1832 to oppose the Great Reform Act, Whigs and Radicals responded by commissioning their own clubhouse, instructing architect Charles Barry to outdo the competition. He succeeded rather spectacularly. Barry modelled the building on Rome's Palazzo Farnese, creating a palazzo so grand that it cost double the original budget.

Its kitchen became equally famous. Alexis Soyer, the celebrity chef who presided there from 1837, designed an innovative basement workspace featuring gas stoves and a twelve-sided central table that drew 15,000 visitors in a single year. His lamb cutlets remain on the menu today. Literary fame followed when Jules Verne chose the club as Phileas Fogg's starting point in Around the World in Eighty Days.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the architectural rivalry between Victorian London's gentlemen's clubs and explain how this palazzo of progressive politics shaped figures from Churchill to H.G. Wells.