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.