He is the author of several books, among them the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy and the Sunday Times Bestseller about UK politics, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK. Kuper’s greatest mistake is commonplace among Oxford graduates: they think we care that they went there.

Robbed of the chance to be wartime heroes, angered by Europe’s dominance over their sceptred isle, these latter-day Woosters hit on Brexit as a means of re-establishing their own superiority: “Ruling Britain was the prerogative of their caste.Discover the captivating origins and hidden meanings of the flags that we all know today in this sparkling tour through this universal subject! Entirely against the rules, candidates would campaign for their slates: “Vote for me as treasurer, for him as secretary and for her as president. The union was one of those Oxford institutions that can flatter middle-class teenagers such as William Hague and Theresa May into feeling posh.

To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. In Oxford this was reflected in the antics of the Oxford Union (a debating society dominated by the Conservative party), the goonery of the Bullingdon Club (the obnoxious dining club that had both David Cameron and Boris Johnson as members), the popularity of the Brideshead Revisited TV adaptation and the prominence of affected fuddy-duddy types like Johnson and Rees-Mogg on campus.Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. But by 1984, emboldened by the twin forces of Falklands-era Thatcherism and Brideshead Revisited on the telly, archaic Tory voices – carefully laced with ironies by Johnson – were raucous again. Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep, nowhere more so than in his private life. In Chums, Kuper also discusses another notable difference between the Oxford Etonians who’ve held power recently and those who did so in the first half of the 20th century. Brown reports being traduced by Johnson, who supposedly ghosted an inaccurate attack on her in the Telegraph, under Mostyn-Owen’s byline.