Lipman, Maria (20 April 2021). "The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies, and Exile in Russia; The Extraordinary Story of George Blake". Foreign Affairs. No.May/June 2021. ISSN 0015-7120 . Retrieved 2 July 2023. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Kuper has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year, in 2016 [3] and 2020. [4] Books [ edit ]

Kuper, Simon (18 September 2019). "How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain's next prime minister". Financial Times . Retrieved 1 July 2023. To celebrate the publication of #DisobedientBodies – the new manifesto on beauty from Emma Dabiri, the bestselling author of #WhatWhitePeopleCanDoNext – we’re running a giveaway with UK indie nail polish brand Télle Moi. I found this to be an interesting little book. It looks at the core of the Chumocracy - how the ruling caste went to school with each other, went to university with each other, married each other, and are sending their children on the same trajectory to perpetuate themselves. I think that I knew this already, but the book provides an interesting data point. A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters' Matthew Parris For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.Adam Sisman`s definitive biography, published in 2015, revealed much about the elusive spy-turned-novelist; yet le Carré was adamant that some subjects should remain hidden, at least during his lifetime. #TheSecretLifeOfJohnLeCarré is the story of what was left out, and offers reflections on the difficult relationship between biographer and subject. More than that, it adds a necessary coda to the life and work of this complex, driven, restless man. Chumsis a snapshot of a time gone by, bringing alive 1980s Oxford in vivid detail. It acts as a warning about a future without social mobility, showing the disproportionate influence closed networks can play. Simon Kuper’s writing makes the book a gripping read from start to finish, taking you step-by-step from university days and the Oxford Union right to Coronavirusand the heart of government. The book’s thesis, that Oxford (and specifically the Oxford Union) played a formative role in the rise of politicians like Johnson and the idea of Brexit, is thought-provoking; however, I feel we need to consider the counterfactual to judge the extent to which this is true. Ultimately, if Oxford was cut out of the story, would Johnson still be PM? I think the answer is most probably. Discover the fascinating history of the humble notebook, from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers. This is the perfect read for stationery fans and history buffs alike! Kuper’s unique approach to sports writing, particularly on football, has earned him several prestigious accolades, including the 1994 William Hill Sports Book of the Year. He writes about sports "from an anthropological perspective." [6] Time Magazine has called him “one of the world’s leading writers on soccer” [7] and The Economic Times labeled him “one of the world's most famous football writers.” [8] Just makes one wonder: if they spoke with different accents, weren’t affluent, weren’t Nth in a line of family members to have attended the same place – and especially if they were of different ethnicity – would that have ever gone on to where they all are today?

In Chums, Kuper observes that Classics is by far the most common degree among Tory Brexiteers. “[Johnson is] a very seventh rate Homer, rather than a modern analyst who reads a lot of documents and then digests them... What is true has never been something he’s particularly interested in. He’s a myth maker.” In this event, Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Britain’s oldest university - and the friendships and worldviews it created – has shaped the nation and helped make Brexit. Kuper, Simon (17 March 2022). "Becoming French is like winning the lottery". Financial Times . Retrieved 2 July 2023. In 2022 he published Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, [32] [33] [34] about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster. [35] Personal life [ edit ]

It is the array of stories, quotes and anecdotes that makes this such a gripping read. Simon Kuper, a columnist for the Financial Times (and a great writer on football too) uses a wonderfully understated style as he exposes the hidden depths of the establishment and the inextricable link to Eton and, in particular, Oxford University. Chums has its inevitable chapter on the antics of Boris Johnson and David Cameron at the “Buller”, a cosplay England of mustard-coloured waistcoats and social condescension. Those were the days. Beyond the panelled debating chambers and honey-stoned colleges, modernity and change could feel like decline. Progress could feel like decline. Little wonder, then, that Kuper identifies Oxford as the incubator of Brexit. Thirteen of the seventeen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford University. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of this narrowest of talent pools - and the friendships and worldviews it created - shaped modern Britain.

Johnson’s gift turned out to be for winning office, not doing anything with it. He didn’t make much of his presidency, recalls Tim Hames, a union politician of the time: “The thing was a shambles. He couldn’t organise a term card to save his life. He didn’t have the sort of support mechanism that he realised in later life that he required.” I’ve never given much thought to Oxbridge and honestly I’m glad I didn’t. For one thing, the book highlights just how fundamental the establishments appear to have been in how Brexit played out, but additionally, the internal corruption the networks have enabled, and the unfair playing ground the rest of us are at least five steps behind on. They aren't just colleagues - they are peers, rivals, friends. And, when they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them.Kuper wrote for Oxford’s independent student paper Cherwell where they would sometimes cover campus eccentrics like Rees-Mogg but he had no conception of what any of it meant at the time. “When I was writing the book, I spoke to a guy who was at Cherwell with me... He said, ‘I thought these people were the past that, they were just going to disappear as Britain moved on into modernity.’ And I thought, Wow, he had a view in the 80s. I didn’t have a view. I didn’t really have any understanding of where people sat or where they were going.” Kuper’s greatest mistake is commonplace among Oxford graduates: they think we care that they went there. While there may be some truth in the argument being made about every problem in the UK being down to most politicians being educated in Oxford (and we don't get as far as 2022 so naturally the UK is the only country that has problems), it's also tortuously hyperbolic at times: The other point we should briefly reflect on is whether Johnson would be in power, and whether Brexitwould have happened without Oxford’s involvement – I personally believe they likely would still be in power today due to the networks formed at an earlier age. We need to think earlier down the educational journey when reflecting on social mobility; to expect universities to change the entire playing field places too much burden on institutions that already do so much good.

Nearly all campaigning for votes was supposedly banned under the union’s own rule 33. There were occasional attempts to enforce the rule, through tribunals featuring London lawyers, but candidates almost always flouted it. You talk of Anthony and Cleopatra in a detached manner, Mr Jones,” said the languid interviewer. “Tell me, would you die for love?” And that’s the overriding feeling of Chums - of people who have led protected lives, bringing about very painful and real consequences through their carelessness. In truth,” writes Kuper, with an even-handedness surely acquired during his early schooling in the Netherlands, “almost everyone who gets into Oxford is a mixture of privilege and merit in varying proportions.” Though mostly privilege. At the start of the 21st century, private schools (which at the time educated about 7 per cent of the population) supplied around half of Oxford’s domestic student intake. Kuper quotes the former Labour minister Andrew Adonis: “The place felt like one huge public school to which a few others of us had been smuggled in by mistake.” Kuper is considered one of the most influential voices at the Financial Times. [17] Since joining the publication in 1994, he has held various roles, writing on a wide range of topics, from sports and popular culture to politics. [18] [19]Deng, Yii-Jeng (21 May 2022). "Book Review: Chums by Simon Kuper". The Oxford Student (Oxford's University's Student Newspaper). During the Second World War, Edward Heath was mentioned in dispatches and awarded an MBE for active service in the Normandy landings. “He said later that seeing Europe destroy itself again left him ‘with the deep belief that remains with me to this day: that the peoples of Europe must never again be allowed to fight each other’. In 1973, he took the UK into the EEC.” Clearly, a lot of work for “de-radicalising” certain institutions of education from such ideological manifestations (I’m trying to be polite!) of societal inequality and destruction. He is scathing of those habits of tutorial teaching at the university, which too frequently rewarded bluffing and charm over industry and doubt. Still, this is not, he insists, “a personal revenge on Oxford”. It’s rather “an attempt to write a group portrait of a set of Tory Brexiteers… who took an ancient route through Oxford to power”. It helped this new breed, Kuper argues, that at the union, they were often joking among themselves. The Oxford University Labour Club, high on Billy Bragg and miners’ solidarity marches, boycotted the debating chamber (one result, Kuper suggests, was that they “never learned to speak”). The political big beasts on the left in the second half of the 80s, in university terms, were the Miliband brothers, Dave and Ted, and Eddie Balls and Yvette Cooper, organising rent protests at their respective colleges. The young Keir Starmer, who did his undergraduate degree at Leeds, arrived in 1985 and made a stand about supporting the print workers at Wapping. Johnson could raise predictable guffaws in union debates when characterising socialist students as “retreating into their miserable dungareed caucuses”.