The Guardian reports that the building at 106 Piccadilly from this autumn will house the Eaton Square Upper School:
…the first new co-ed private school in central London for decades, which is preparing to open its doors to the children of the super-rich bankers, aristocrats and oligarchs of Mayfair and Chelsea.
The building is best known for having been the home of the St James’s Club for over 100 years:
The historic building – on some of London’s most valuable land – is restricted by the council for use for social or community benefit. It was previously the London outpost of a Malaysian university. It was once the home of the French ambassador and for 110 years it was the St James’s gentlemen’s club, where Ian Fleming and Evelyn Waugh were members.
Waugh made an upward progression through the London gentlemen’s clubs. His first was the Savile Club, of which both his father Arthur and brother Alec were members. According to Selina Hastings, the Savile “lacked the patrician character that properly suited his self-image.” He moved on to the St James’s “which had distinguished diplomatic affiliations and was situated in an imposing eighteenth-century house in Piccadilly.” In 1941, Waugh was elected to White’s, the “oldest and grandest of the gentlemen’s clubs, with a rakish, lordly glamour, reflected by its prominent position and distinctive architecture at the top of St James’s” (Hastings, p. 443). The St James’s Club merged with Brooks’s in 1978 and vacated its premises on Piccadilly at that time. The Savile Club on Brook St in Mayfair and White’s at the top of St James’s live on.
