Martin Vander Weyer
How to Spend It
The Rich: From Slaves to Super-Yachts – A 2,000-Year History
By John Kampfner
Little, Brown 454pp £25
‘The wealthy invariably win’ is an observation by John Kampfner that has recently been given intellectual underpinning by Thomas Piketty, who in Capital in the Twenty-First Century came up with a neat little formula to prove that the rich always get richer relative to the rest of us because the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of growth in the economy as a whole. But the celebrity French economist spoiled his dazzling simplification by packing seven hundred pages of theory and (some say unreliable) data around it. A former New Statesman editor, Kampfner has found a more readable way of tackling the same theme, by retelling the life stories of a cross-section of the super rich over the past two thousand years and drawing parallels between them.
To some extent, it must be said, the parallels are obvious. To amass a giant fortune, whether in ancient Rome or modern Russia, has always required ruthlessness and political clout. Great philanthropy, be that in Renaissance Florence or 19th-century America, is very often the fruit of an earlier phase of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk