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The Bullingdon Club is an exclusive but unofficial all-male students' dining club based in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is noted for its wealthy members, grand banquets and boisterous rituals, such as the vandalising ('trashing') of restaurants and college rooms. The Bullingdon was originally a sporting club, dedicated to cricket and horse-racing, although club dinners gradually became its principal activity. Membership in the club is expensive, with tailor-made uniforms, regular gourmet hospitality, and a tradition of on-the-spot payment for damages. The club has attracted controversy, due to former members now being part of the UK political establishment. These include the current Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Mayor of London Boris Johnson. The University of Oxford extends no official recognition to the club, and many local restaurants refuse to host its events. It is regularly featured in fiction and drama, sometimes under its own name, and sometimes easily recognisable under another (as in the 2014 film '' The Riot Club''). ==History== The Bullingdon Club was founded over 200 years ago. Petre Mais claims it was founded in 1780 and was limited to 30 men,〔Stuart Petre Brodie Mais, The Story of Oxford, 1951; p. 70〕 and by 1875 it was considered "an old Oxford institution, with many good traditions". Originally it was a hunting and cricket club, and Thomas Assheton Smith II is recorded as having batted for the Bullingdon against the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1796.〔Aubery Noakes, Sportsmen in a Landscape, 1971; p.61〕 In 1805 cricket at Oxford University "was confined to the old Bullingdon Club, which was expensive and exclusive". This foundational sporting purpose is attested to in the Club's symbol. The Wisden Cricketer reports that the Bullingdon is "ostensibly one of the two original Oxford University cricket teams but it actually used cricket merely as a respectable front for the mischievous, destructive or self-indulgent tendencies of its members".〔Mark Davies ''The Wisden Cricketer May 2010'', "Drinking and Politics"〕 By the late 19th century, the present emphasis on dining within the Club began to emerge. However, Walter Long attests that in 1875 "Bullingdon Club () matches were also of frequent occurrence, and many a good game was played there with visiting clubs. The Bullingdon Club dinners were the occasion of a great display of exuberant spirits, accompanied by a considerable consumption of the good things of life, which often made the drive back to Oxford an experience of exceptional nature".〔 A report of 1876 relates that "cricket there was secondary to the dinners, and the men were chiefly of an expensive class".〔James Pycroft in London Society, v.30, 1876 (James Hogg, Florence Marrayat ed.); p. 197〕 The ''New York Times'' told its readers in 1913 that "The Bullingdon represents the acme of exclusiveness at Oxford; it is the club of the sons of nobility, the sons of great wealth; its membership represents the 'young bloods' of the university". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bullingdon Club」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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