Born to
Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite Hardcover – 10 Sept. 2024
by Aaron
Reeves (Author), Sam Friedman (Author)
A uniquely
data-rich analysis of the British elite from the Victorian era to today: who
gets in, how they get there, what they like and look like, where they go to
school, and what politics they perpetuate.
An Economist
Book of the Year.
A Times Book
of the Year.
Think of the
British elite and familiar caricatures spring to mind. But are today’s power
brokers a conservative chumocracy, born to privilege and anointed at Eton and
Oxford? Or is a new progressive elite emerging with different values and
political instincts?
Aaron Reeves
and Sam Friedman combed through a trove of data in search of an answer,
scrutinizing the profiles, interests, and careers of over 125,000 members of
the British elite from the late 1890s to today. At the heart of this
meticulously researched study is the historical database of Who’s Who, but
Reeves and Friedman also mined genealogical records, examined probate data, and
interviewed over 200 leading figures from a wide range of backgrounds and
professions to uncover who runs Britain, how they think, and what they want.
What they
found is that there is less movement at the top than we think. Yes, there has
been some progress on including women and Black and Asian Brits, but those born
into the top 1 percent are just as likely to get into the elite today as they
were 125 years ago. What has changed is how elites present themselves. Today’s
elite pedal hard to convince us they are perfectly ordinary.
Why should
we care? Because the elites we have affect the politics we get. While scholars
have long proposed that the family you are born into, and the schools you
attend, leave a mark on the exercise of power, the empirical evidence has been
thin—until now.
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