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The lovely Steinway in the hall
Worshipful Company of Actuaries' Installation Dinner
9th July 2026Carpenters' Hall
Steaming hot in Carpenters' Hall and my tenuous link to the Actuaries' Company
We are part of a regular "circuit" with eleven Livery Companies, one Guild, and two Companies from outside the City of London. We invite their Masters and Clerks to many of our events, and they, in turn, invite us to theirs. Among them is the Worshipful Company of Actuaries, number 91 in the Order of Precedence.
On Thursday 9 July I was invited to attend their Installation Court Dinner at Carpenters' Hall, where the outgoing Master, the brilliantly energetic Emma McWilliam – the Company's fourth lady Master – handed over to the incoming Master, Derek Newton.
I don't think I have ever been so warm at a Livery function! Around 150 of us gathered on one of the hottest and most humid evenings of the year in the City. For the first time I can remember at a formal Livery dinner, the gentlemen were not only invited to remove their dinner jackets but were also given permission to loosen convention even further by taking off their ties. Hand-held fans, both battery-powered and traditional, were much in evidence.
Past Master Julie Griffiths spoke about Pollinating London Together before an excellent dinner from The Cook & The Butler. Grace was said by Fr James Titley of St Lawrence Jewry.
I was seated between Master Barber Antony Michalski and Junior Warden Paul McNamara, who gave a (very) warm and entertaining welcome to the guests—my first opportunity to be on the receiving end rather than the delivery end of one of these speeches. We were treated to a delightful musical interlude, with a pianist and singer performing five numbers chosen by the Master, including favourites by Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles and The Beach Boys, before the Master and his guest speaker, his schoolfriend Ian Dyson CBE QPM DL, former Commissioner of the City of London Police, rounded off the formal proceedings.
There was time for a stirrup cup, where I was able to say farewell to Immediate Past Master Firefighter Andrew Phillips, who has recently handed over his own chain of office.
The Actuaries' Company was founded in 1979 following an initiative by Sir Kenneth Cork, then Aldermanic Sheriff and later Lord Mayor, who believed that the City's rapidly expanding financial services sector should be better represented among the traditional Guilds and Livery Companies.
That prompted a memory from my own career. During the mid-1980s I came to know another member of the Cork family after Cork Gully had been folded into Coopers & Lybrand. An insolvency specialist, he was delightful company and would occasionally invite me to lunch at the Naval and Military Club—the famous "In and Out"—then at 94 Piccadilly and now at 4 St James's Square (where we traditionally hold our own Past Masters' Dinner each year). In those days, ladies were required to use a side entrance in Half Moon Street. That seemed unremarkable to me at the time. I might take a different view now!
The Companies and Guild with whom we regularly exchange invitations are:
- Pewterers (16)
- Painter-Stainers (28)
- Plaisterers (46)
- Horners (54)
- Fan Makers (76)
- Master Mariners (78)
- Air Pilots (81)
- Furniture Makers (83)
- Scientific Instrument Makers (84)
- Actuaries (91)
- Hackney Carriage Drivers (104)
- Guild of Watermen & Lightermen
- Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire
- Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol
It is a wonderfully varied group and an example of one of the great pleasures of the Livery movement, which encourages friendships across an extraordinary range of professions, crafts and traditions.