Who Runs This Place?: The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century - Softcover

Anthony Sampson was educated at Westminster and Oxford, and after a spell as a naval officer he went to Johannesburg and edited the black magazine Drum, becoming a friend of young ANC revolutionaries. He then joined the Observer, but left to write The Anatomy of Britain and became a full time author, writing best-sellers investigating oil companies, arms dealers and bankers. He was editorial adviser to the Brandt Commission, director of the New Statesman, trustee of the Guardian and chairman of the Society of Authors, and he wrote the authorised biography of Nelson Mandela.

Anthony Sampson's Who Runs This Place? Asks New Labour's central question. * Observer * Sampson blows away the smoke that obscures British democracy and ...dissects an old organism still alive and diseased with new secrets. * The Times * Sampson's last book is up there with his best * Evening Standard * This anatomy dissects an old organism still alive and diseased with new secrets * The Times * A contemporary history with a strong sense of historical change * John Hudson, BBC History * 'A superb field-guide to "the masters of the marketplace" * Independent * Sampson's overview of today's corrupt, nepotistic, celebrity-obsessed Britain makes for fascinating, if depressing, reading * Daily Telegraph * Britain's anatomy is...illuminated by the unmatched politico-social lucidity of a fine mind...a wonderfully dismaying book * Nadine Gordimer, Times Literary Supplement * The leap this books asks us to make - the comparison between the Britain of 1962 and that of 2004 - is useful and hugely instructive. * Guardian * Sampson succeeds in providing an exhaustive answer to the question he has set himself in the title * The Guardian * Indefatigable... in researching information and marshalling facts * The Evening Standard * Brilliantly written and deeply sobering * JG Ballard * His lucid prose dissects the new centres of power ... A bracing read * JG Ballard, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year * An important book, raising an increasingly urgent set of questions about who has the power in Tony Blair's Britain, and for whom they exercise it. * The Spokesman Manifesto 50 * Sampson sees power clearly and calmly, as Trollope or Galsworthy did; and it is not a pretty sight...He comes shrewdly at Mr Blair from an unprotected flank * Daily Telegraph * This is a wise, perceptive and not unduly pessimistic book * Spectator * He has stood back from the trees and given us a view of the wood. He is right to find it rotten * Sunday Times * A coherent critique about the nature of political power in British society * The Scotsman * A superb diagnosis... enormously readable, containing a wealth of entertaining apercus and digressions... [and] a wit that is as sharp as his scalpel * New Statesman * Many shrewd and informative chapters * Sunday Telegraph * An impressive and immediate air of gravitas.. Sampson is a clear thinker who manages to gently ease the reader throuh a vast and complex subject * Scotland on Sunday * An exhilarating air of authority... [thanks to] its author's happy and unusual combination of wisdom and research * Mail on Sunday * A compelling analysis of power * The Times * No one has matched Sampson's combination of analysis, networking and sharp drafting ... A model of its kind * Times Higher Education Supplement *