New Left Review I/16, July-August 1962

Ioan Davies

Phrenology of Britain

Anatomy of Britain; Anthony Sampson; Hodder and Stoughton 35s.

“I have written this book,” Sampson states baldly in his conclusion, “without the academic equipment of a social or political theorist.” It is symptomatic of the state of our social studies that the first attempt at an account of the power elite in Britain should have been made by an “enquiring journalist”, whose credentials are his gossip column in a Sunday newspaper. The book bears all the marks of its origin. Theory is, of course, completely absent; the emphasis on “particulars” which form a “picture of the metabolism of the anonymous institutions which settle our daily lives” has produced a jumble of trivia held together by vague references to Bagehot (“as a kind of yardstick for developments”); such statistics as are given are rarely explained, and frequently irrelevant. Although Sampson claims to write “in a deliberately detached and analytical way”, such assumptions as he has colour the whole book, without being debated at any stage. The book is a monument to the dilettante: its level is the whimsical anecdote, the mass of board-room chatter, the hastily-produced vade-mecum for the socialite. The bulk of the book is a conducted tour round “Sampson’s ‘living museum’” with its Pendennis conversation-pieces and its cult of leadership. Instead of analysing the structure of power, Sampson is mesmerised by the fact of power: no wonder the top 200 were so eager to talk— Sampson might act as their ambassador. Were it not for the fact that the book is likely to get a wide circulation, it would be pointless to review it. But it is also typical of a trend in popular sociology and approach to politics that is increasingly influential: if the book itself is not important, the political thinking which it represents is.

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