Described as a nursery for the Royal Geographical Society, the Raleigh Club was founded by Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke in 1826, "who conceived the idea of forming a most agreeable dining society composed solely of travellers".
Its members were extraordinary, as between them their experience covered the knowledge of the known world at that time and would lead to the formation of the Geographical Society of London in 1830.
This talk looks at the history of the Raleigh Club and its remarkable members.
Part of our Be inspired series spotlights fascinating research on our Collections.
Please note: The views of our speakers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society.
Note on captions
The Society aims to provide automatically-generated captions for all event recordings. The captions appear as text at the bottom of the video which you can toggle on and off.
The accuracy of automatically-generated captions varies depending on the audio quality, any specialist language used and the speaker. They are therefore are unlikely to be 100% accurate and the Society does not edit or correct automatically-generated captions.
- Exhibition
Skin maps: semi-permeable cartography
A new exhibition of collages and reworkings of historic maps from the RGS and other archives by Steph Morris.
LondonMembers only12 Jun 2026 - 16 Aug 2026 - Webinar
Exploring literacy through geography
In this one-hour session, Fiona Sheriff will discuss a range of literacy strategies which can be used to demystify geographical vocabulary alongside a range of texts which can be used to open worlds in the classroom.
OnlineTeachersMonday 29 June 2026 - Exhibition
Earth Photo exhibition
The Society is pleased to showcase the winners and best in class from our international competition dedicated to engaging with still and moving image makers sharing the prescient issues affecting the climate and life on our planet.
LondonOpen to all30 Jun 2026 - 24 Jul 2026