Old Boy Networks: Who We Know And How We Use Them

HEALD, Tim [288] pp. Ticknor & Fields 1984 6 1/2" x 9 1/2" Jacket design by Katya Wells An insider's detailed, diffuse attempt to show that, despite the immense value of connections, it's--by and large--what you are that counts. Heald is an English journalist-freelancer, and his frame of reference is almost wholly British, so that readers who can't tell an Etonian (blue and black diagonally striped tie) from a Wykehamist (red, chocolate, and blue), or the Second Royal Anglians from the Devons and Dorsets (two regiments), are likely to find the going slow. But the real problem is that Heald tackles too much. He does a good job, for instance, of demystifying the supposed Public School-Oxbridge mafia, noting that at topnotch schools like Rugby and Charterhouse barely a quarter of the boys are sons of alumni, while Oxford and Cambridge are bending over backwards to admit students from ""maintained"" schools: if Oxbridge graduates seem overrepresented in the seats of power (a partly false impression), they must constitute a natural elite. Well, not only Marxists will quarrel with Heald about that one. He goes on, moreover, to investigate Fleet Street, the Army, the (Anglican) clergy, Parliament, ethnic minorities in London, the law, high society, godparents and godchildren--everything from the ""Massingberd 500"" (key families in England) to the gay subculture. Born and bred in the Old Boy Network, Heald knows the territory and makes a lot of sensible comments (e.g., that the most potent networks are those not explicitly designed to help their members get ahead). But his sociological skills are primitive, and his grand generalizations--about, say, what he labels PPN, ""Private Personal Networks""--either obvious or naive. So: a large and sometimes arresting grab-bag of facts.…