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, and why they continue to fascinate us. To what extent are the ideas of meritocracy and the establishment simply imagined? And if a meritocracy rose in the years following 1945, has it now stalled?
With its penetrating examination of the British school system and postwar trends, Establishment and Meritocracy is an important resource for those concerned about the link between education and later success, both for individuals and their societies.
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Did the Meritocracy Rise? |
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The Prototype Meritocracy in Trouble? |
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The Pursuit of a 'Well-Tempered Meritocracy' |
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Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Harvard (where he was a Kennedy Scholar 1971-72), Hennessy went on to spend 20 years in journalism. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. The author of several major works of contemporary British history including The Secret State, The Prime Minister, Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 and Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties, Hennessy nows sits as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords.
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