September 29, 2025 message at 130th Season Opener

BSUC— Past,Present, and Future: The History Project

The British Schools & Universities Club is celebrating 130 continuous years as a social club in New York City. With our secretary, Alice Harrison, as an organizing force, we are compiling our documents for donation to an interested historical library or society. We’ll also be sharing highlights on our website and in our events this year.

The documents are a fascinating sidebar to the social history of New York City and  the larger history of Britain and America over the past 130 years—from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age, music halls to hiphop, Queen Victoria to King Charles III, and American  presidents from Grover Cleveland to Donald Trump  BSUC has survived two world wars, one Great Depression, and two worldwide pandemics, in 1917 and  2019. We’ve lasted through slightly more than half of the 250-year history of the United States as an independent nation, which the country is celebrating in 2026.

The secret of the BSUC’s longevity may be that we are and always have been a purely social organization. We are not, as a club, fundraisers or activists on behalf of social or political causes. We are, in fact, ‘useless’ as a group—except in our attempt to preserve values we absorbed in at least a year of British education somewhere in the world: civility, courage, fair play and an appreciation  of cricket, rugby, theater, wit, good music and good food.

Our current fellowship includes a world-class cricket player, a CBE who is an ambassador to the United Nations, a woman who came to the United States on the kindertransport of World War II, an internationally known architectural photographer, and a soprano who fled Hungary  when Russia crushed the 1956 revolution and made her way to New York and a career with the Metropolitan Opera. We’ll be sharing some of their stories here, too.

But our numbers are dwindling, which is why we are so delighted with the newly formed UKAlumni Group, founded through the efforts and database compiled by past BSUC president David Drinkwater. We hope some of you who found your way here tonight through that organization’s mailing list will join us as members. We would love your insights, as the newest generation of British-educated people making their way in NYC, on how to preserve the best of our past while expanding into the future.

There’s a membership form on the website. Make history with us!

—Kathleen Kelly, BSUC historian pro tem