Book reviewer COLIN STEELE settles on two interesting titles. One deals with the slowly changing face of the elites in Britain, the other a humorous listing of the good and bad of modern life.

British sociologists Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman have based a book on an historical data analysis of 125,000 individuals listed in Who’s Who, the biographical dictionary of the British “noteworthy and influential”, supplemented by more than 200 qualitative interviews.

The authors of Born to Rule: the Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard University Belknap Press. $54.25), who recognise their own status as white, male professors at Oxford University and the London School of Economics respectively, say: “We’re interested both in the elite in general (around 33,000 people, in 2022 ) and in the wealthy elite (around 6000 of that 33,000)”. 

They believe “when you look at where these people have come from, the proportion that were born into privilege has hardly changed. At the end of the 19th century, about 20 per cent of the people in Who’s Who were born into families in the top one per cent of the wealth distribution, and today it’s about the same proportion”.

The authors analyse elites through various perspectives, such as aristocratic lineage, education, social networking and notably wealth. They note, as in contemporary America, that the wealth élite are very reluctant to pay more tax, including an inheritance tax, to relieve the increasing inequalities in society. 

Who’s Who entries are slowly increasing, from a very low base, for black and Asian people in Britain. 

They also note that “during the 20th century, we see a shift in the way elites present themselves… Strikingly, elites today try hard to come across as ordinary, and in doing so try to play up the meritocratic nature of their career trajectories”. 

Recreational entries in Who’s Who for most of the 20th century reflected a hunting, shooting and fishing background and a love of antiques, opera and classical music. Now, according to the authors, the elites have switched to expressing a love of popular music, drinking beer, watching soccer and cooking,

Reeves and Friedman’s suggestions for societal change include “a wealth tax to break, or at least weaken, the link between wealth and elite reproduction to give a fairer opportunity to many more people to get into positions of power and influence” and also to break down the stranglehold of private schools and Oxbridge.

Their data analysis, which ended in 2022, was carried out before the 2024 UK Labour victory, which resulted in a cabinet no longer dominated by Oxbridge graduates.

The authors note that people’s backgrounds map on to their political attitudes. 

“Most prominently, we show that elites from working-class backgrounds, women and ethnic minorities who reach elite positions are quite different politically to other elites,” they say.

“Notably, they tend to tilt to the left, politically and socially”.

Private schools enrol only seven per cent of children in Britain, but their graduates hold a disproportionate status in politics, business, the civil service, law, journalism, medicine and the military. The Starmer Labour government has since introduced a 20 per cent VAT on private schools.

There is an increasing inequality in Australian society. Anglicare here is calling for a tax on high-value inheritances above $2 million, not including the family home, In recent years, Australia’s taxation burden has increasingly fallen on working Australians. 

There is much to consider from this British study for Australia, which, like other Western countries, is becoming increasingly unequal in wealth distribution. We may not have the depth of historical lineage of power, but we do have many echoes of born to rule.

AND now for something completely different. Screams! Shrieks of Horror and Yelps of Pleasure from Modern Life by British author Ysenda Maxtone Graham (Hachette $45 ) is a humorous listing of the issues that irritated her throughout a calendar year.

Many of her complaints will resonate with readers. Such as being put on hold by a company while hearing every 10 minutes that your call is important; having to use an unfamiliar parking app in a car park; an access code that doesn’t work when you arrive at your Airbnb booking; receiving round-robin Christmas messages that extol another family’s achievements; remembering all your passwords; emails arriving with numerous emojis; service people who say “no worries” and “have a good day” incessantly; cheap umbrellas that buckle in the first gust of wind; being asked to fill in a “short” customer survey when it takes 10 minutes; weddings that begin 11 in the morning and finish at nine at night and confronting abandoned e-bikes and shopping trolleys on pavements.

Her monthly angst missives are superbly supplemented by illustrations from Sunday Times cartoonist Nick Newman.