Struck by several aspects of this (pretty old now) interview with the writer John Healy, but in particular by this, on the Amis/McEwan crowd: “Middle-class mafia… They can buy their way to a lifelong competitive advantage over the uneducated and poor.”

I don’t disagree. However, one thing I was always aware of when growing up was that, while I might never be able to change the latter aspect of my circumstances, I could certainly change the former. So I did. The apparent erosion of both opportunity for and encouragement to working-class self-education and/or pursuit of higher education is, for me, one of the more galling of recent developments.