Like so many of the postwar generation in Britain, Peter Hennessy climbed the ladders of opportunity set up by the 1944 Education Act designed to encourage a more meritocratic society. In this highly personal book, Hennessy examines the rise of meritocracy as a concept and the persistence of the shadowy notion of an establishment in Britain's institutions of state. He asks whether these elusive concepts still have any power to explain British society,...