I have met the butlers, eaten the quiches, and climbed the roofs. So when it came to writing a history of the modern aristocracy, I had a head-start. A labour of love, my book Heirs and Graces, has ...

Adrian Woolridge, the political editor at The Economist, has tried to pinpoint where we went off the rails and what to do about it in "The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern ...