Born to Rule

The Economist, Best Books of 2024
The Times, Best Ideas Books of 2024

A uniquely data-rich analysis of the British elite from the Victorian era to today: who gets in, how they get there, what they like and look like, where they go to school, and what politics they perpetuate.

Are Britain’s power brokers a conservative chumocracy, born to privilege and anointed at Eton and Oxford? Or is a new progressive elite emerging with different values and political instincts? In search of answers, Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman scrutinized the profiles of over 125,000 members of the British elite from the late 1890s to today. At the heart of this meticulously researched study is the historical database of Who’s Who, but Reeves and Friedman also mined genealogical records, examined probate data, and interviewed over 200 leading figures from a wide range of backgrounds to uncover who runs Britain.

What they found is that there is less movement at the top than we think. Yes, there has been some progress on including women and Black and Asian Brits, but those born into the top 1 percent are just as likely to get into the elite today as they were 125 years ago. What has changed is how elites present themselves. Today’s elite pedal hard to convince us they are perfectly ordinary.

Why should we care? Because the elites we have affect the politics we get. While scholars have long proposed that the family you are born into, and the schools you attend, leave a mark on the exercise of power, the empirical evidence has been thin―until now.