Chums

How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK

By: Simon Kuper

Narrated by: Mark Elstob

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.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, 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 searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters”—MATTHEW PARRIS

©2022 Simon Kuper (P)2022 W. F. Howes Ltd

Fascinating and gripping

Thoroughly researched and written with an insiders perspective and his signature humour, this is a fascinating and gripping account of the English elite. It gave me an new and deeper understanding of the forces and fellows that eventually led to brexit.