It may be a truth, universally acknowledged, that riches do not necessarily bring happiness; but one nevertheless feels they might alleviate some of the more irritating burdens.

Anthony Sampson will almost certainly have hit the jackpot with The Midas Touch. Sampson is one of the most distinguished of this country’s post-war journalists. His early work showed a fascination with power, The Anatomy of Britain leading on to a series of successful books on the power structure around the world.

Analysis of big business propelled him towards the banking system, and his book The Moneylenders, in the early 1980s, was a tour de force: it vividly described the way the sudden riches of the oil producing countries were ‘lent on’ to poor countries which could not possibly repay, and accurately