Author Interview
SIMON KUPER Ed Needham meets the author of Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK (Profile, £16.99) www.strong-words.co.uk
“At Oxford, it is very realistic to aspire to be prime minister from the age of 14. And then you get a statue, because the prime minister of Britain in their minds is a glorious figure that bestrides the world stage. They think of past figures like Palmerston, Gladstone, Churchill. When Johnson was asked why he left journalism for politics, he said it was because they don’t put up statues to journalists”
E
d Needham is the editor of Strong Words, a magazine launched in 2018 all about new books, full of loquacious reviews, author interviews and stories behind the great novels of history. In this issue, Ed meets the author of a new tome that sets out to expose the troubling amounts of political power wielded by a very small and privileged Oxford elite, many of whom were members of the notorious Bullingdon Club.
CHAP: What has been the initial reaction to the book? KUPER: It is basically divisive, where some people say, “Oh, he’s saying that Brexit wasn’t actually the will of the people who voted for it, that it’s just some little group of Oxford toffs who made it happen.” So the Brexiteers are very sensitive about it, and the Remainers like it. I was hoping it would not be divisive in that way, because what I did not
130
