Best and brightest?

The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by Adrian Wooldridge Allen Lane, 496 pages, £25

In this readable and wide-ranging book, Adrian Wooldridge – sitting tenant of the “Bagehot” column in – brings a historical perspective to the current “crisis of the meritocracy”, in which meritocratic values and institutions (especially educational ones) are assailed from both the left and populist right as mystified bastions of privilege. Against this attack, Wooldridge maintains that meritocracy is revolutionary and egalitarian. He makes life easier for himself by foraying backwards, as far as Plato, focusing especially on the long haul from the Enlightenment to the brink of the present, when hereditary privilege