Anatomy of Britain [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This is a book about the workings of Britain—who runs it and how, how they got there, and how they are changing. I have not tried to approach it as an historian, or as a student of constitutions, but simply as an enquiring journalist. I first became interested when I returned to England after four years in Africa, and found myself curious about the slowness and complexity of Britain compared to Africa: and later, as a columnist for The Observer, writing often about people in prominent positions, my curiosity broadened. So I decided, rashly, to spend eighteen months exploring the ramifications of people and power, and this book is the result. I have aimed to offer myself as an informal guide to a living museum, describing the rooms and exhibits as I found them, giving basic hard facts and frequent quotations from others, but not hesitating to add my own comments. I have had to restrict the field. There has been no time or space to cover the broad fields of art, medicine, religion or provincial life and culture which all go to make up the character of Britain: they would need another quarter-million words. I have concentrated on the basic anatomy—the arms and legs and the main blood stream. Nor do I deal with the life of ordinary people. Basically this is a book about the managers—in government, industry, science or communication. But within those spheres I have let my curiosity wander and filled in some flesh and blood. In particular I have tried to give some picture of the metabolism of the anonymous institutions which settle our everyday lives. My method has been fairly straightforward: I have written to about two hundred people, asking to see them, and asking what they were up to. They have, with a few exceptions, been surprisingly helpful: the more important the people, the easier, it seems, they are to see. There was no difficulty in talking to all the cabinet, senior civil servants, or chairmen of the biggest corporations. One or two said that they could not, for differing reasons, talk freely: but the only people who said they were too busy to see me were Charles Clore, Sir Hugh Eraser and Lord Cobbold. xi