Garrick Club asked to consider membership for seven leading women

The classicist Mary Beard, the former home secretary Amber Rudd, Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman and the new Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika are among the first names to have been put forward to the club as possible future members.

Also on the list are the actor Juliet Stevenson, Margaret Casely-Hayford, who chairs the trustees of Shakespeare’s Globe and is chancellor of Coventry University, and Elizabeth Gloster, formerly an appeal court judge.

On Thursday the Bar Council, the professional body for barristers, warned that exclusive members’ clubs created “ the potential for unfair advantage ” for lawyers seeking to become judges.

Made public for the first time by the Guardian, the club’s closely guarded membership book includes dozens of judges, dozens of members of the House of Lords, the deputy prime minister, the secretary of state for levelling up, the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, at least 10 MPs, heads of influential thinktanks, law firms, private equity companies, academics, prominent actors, rock stars and senior journalists.

Another of the new nominees said she was reluctant to be quoted publicly at this stage, but added: “My view is that when I was approached I thought it was a bit hypocritical to decline the invitation after spending years railing against all-male bastions.”

The club’s managing committee is considering a new legal opinion given by the David Pannick KC, who led the successful Brexit article 50 case against the government, advising that the current rules at the men-only do not in fact bar women from being members.