Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022

Power. Privilege. Parties.
It's a very small world at the top.

'Brilliant ... traces Brexit back to the debating chambers of the Oxford Union in the 1980s' James O'Brien

'A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters' Matthew Parris

'A sparkling firework of a book' Lynn Barber, Spectator

'Exquisite and depressing in equal measure' Matthew Syed, Sunday Times

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Whitehall is swarming with old Oxonians. They debated each other in tutorials, ran against each other in student elections, and attended the same balls and black tie dinners.

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.

Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. 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.

A damning look at the university clique-turned-Commons majority that will blow the doors of Westminster wide open and change the way you look at our democracy forever.

Reviews

'A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters' - Matthew Parris

'A gripping read ... exquisite and depressing in equal measure' - Matthew Syed

'A sparkling firework of a book' - Lynn Barber

'Incisive, insightful and timely' - Richard Beard

'Fascinating ... The picture Kuper draws is of a nation with a decadent and deeply unprofessional ruling class, a diagnosis with which it is impossible to disagree' - Hugo Rifkind

Author Bio

Simon Kuper is an author and Financial Times journalist, born in Uganda and raised around the world. An Oxford graduate, he later attended Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for the Observer, The Times and Guardian, and is also the author of The Happy Traitor.