Engagingly honest about Mitchell's ups and downs in politics, Beyond a Fringe is crammed with hilarious political anecdotes and irresistible insider gossip from the heart of Westminster.
The interlocking themes of Establishment and Meritocracy are a crucial part of the intellectual compost that made Hennessy's generation of postwar Britons. The Establishment and the concept of a growing and eventually self-propelling meritocracy were always at odds, and the policies that brought it about dramatically altered British society.