‘The club stood in a leafy, sleepy and genteel street, quiet with the snow that had returned with a vengeance, falling fast and mounting over roofs and pavements as though the brief respite in the arctic winter had never been.’
Galbraith, Robert. The Silkworm: Cormoran Strike Book 2 (p. 429)
Chelsea was once a popular part of town for artists, and a group of them began to meet regularly at a pub on the King’s Road. Towards the end of the century, they decided to find a place of their own. The club, now known as the Chelsea Arts Club, moved to Old Church Street, the oldest street in Chelsea, in 1902.
The eccentric and charming club is known for its beautiful gardens, which is where Strike waits in the snow to confront the killer of Owen Quine while a dinner is held for an elderly children’s author, Larry Pinkelman inside. It’s also notoriously hard to join, but luckily
When the killer flees, a taxi is waiting which will end its journey in Sloane Square, crashed among the Christmas lights and surrounding luxury apartments in the thick snow.
The club is famous for attracting famous artists and is proudly ‘bohemian’ in character. At least two thirds of the membership make their living as artists, and a lot of the remaining third are writers, like those who gather for dinner at the end of Robin and Strike’s investigation, or dancers and musicians. Even if they did have room for a detective, Strike may well be banned for life, given he uses a mobile phone as the killer flees, which is strictly forbidden.
