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TheDiogenes Club is a fictionalgentlemen's club created bySir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in severalSherlock Holmes stories, such as 1893's "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". It seems to have been named afterDiogenes the Cynic (though this is never explained in the original stories) and was co-founded by Sherlock's indolent elder brotherMycroft Holmes.
The club as described by Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter":
"There are many men in London, you know, who, some fromshyness, some frommisanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."
Although there is no hint in the originalSherlock Holmescanon that the Diogenes Club is anything but what it seems to be, several later writers developed and used the idea that the club was founded as a front for theBritish Secret Service. This may have its root in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" (1908), in which Mycroft Holmes is revealed to be the supreme and indispensablebrain-trust behind the British government, who pieces together collective government secrets and offers advice on the best way to act.
The idea was popularised byThe Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a1970 motion picture directed byBilly Wilder, and has since been frequently used inpastiches of Conan Doyle's stories as well as the TV seriesSherlock.[citation needed]
The Diogenes Club has appeared, in various forms, in many other settings, most of which take as given the Club's connection to the British Secret Service:
Furthermore, the club is also shown in the 2016 episode ofSherlock "The Abominable Bride" set in the Victorian Era. In this adaptation, the silent nature of the club stems from a desire to prevent the accidental leaking of state secrets by the members as, according to Mycroft, they all share one tea lady.
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