Matthew Parris

Who Runs the Show?

The Establishment – And How They Get Away with It

By

Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 358pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

So it’s all a big stitch-up by the rich and powerful, dutifully serenaded by craven politicians and crazed ideologues?

Scrawled in the margins of my copy of The Establishment – And How They Get Away with It are my angry protests, double-underlinings with ‘No! No!’ beside them and inky shouts of ‘Rubbish!’, ‘Cop-out!’ and ‘This is an intellectual disgrace!’ At one point, and most damningly, appears, ‘Feels like a 320-page Guardian op-ed’.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    • 'We read from left to right and from start to finish. Or do we?' Stuart Hannabus considers the merits of reading i… ,
    • Domestic scandal, sexual abuse and serial killers are on the menu in April's crime round-up. revie… ,
    • What did Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Edmund Burke all have in common? Clare Bucknell reveal… ,
    • 'Behind Berlusconi’s greasepaint and his rictus grin, the performance of Toni Servillo suggests the affectless holl… ,
    Follow Us