The Oxbridge Conspiracy: How the Ancient Universities Have Kept Their Stranglehold on the Establishment

by Walter Ellis

Set against the deceptively unworthy background of dreaming spires, this book is a cogent and controversial analysis of the role played by Oxbridge in Britain today.

Running against the tide of conventional analysis, Walter Ellis examines what gives Oxbridge its unquestioned status and evokes the mysterious alchemy by which it transforms those fortunate or gifted enough to bask in its quadrangles. Interviewing hundreds of Oxbridge graduates as well as tutors and fellows, he paints a vivid picture of how the influence of Oxbridge is sustained and extended.

Using arguments with arrow-like precision, Walter Ellis demonstrates how the Oxbridge benediction is in many respects a curse for the country; how a system designed to reward excellence merely compounds inertia; and now those who should be leading their nation to greater heights are more likely to be involved in the 'orderly management of decline'.

In a book that is both serious and entertaining hard-hitting and highly readable, Walter Ellis reveals how the attitudes manifested by Britain's two favourite universities are a key to understanding the problems of Britain today.

Genres: Nonfiction

340 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Walter Ellis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in September 1948.

His published books include: Franco's Map, How Not to Write a Bestseller - An Expert Guide, The Beginnings of the End, The Oxbridge Conspiracy, The Caravaggio Code, Anglophobia and London Eye.

Reviews

[Marc Maitland · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book written by someone who admits at the start that it might be perceived to be the rantings of a man with a huge chip on his shoulder, but strenuously denies this to be the case. Walter Ellis is an Ulsterman who is most certainly not the product of an Oxbridge education, but having read what is most certainly a most readable tome, I am left uncertain whether he regrets that or not.

Mr. Ellis’ basic thesis is that, whether knowingly or not, whether by design or accident, the twins pillars of the English academic establishment, have conspired to populate all of the British Establishment and beyond, indeed the pinnacles of just about every facet of national life from the Church and Law right down to popular culture (Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry to name but two), and that this is a Very Bad Thing. The vital areas of Industry and Innovation are, Mr. Ellis postulates, not so populated. This is equally a Very Bad Thing. Although Mr Ellis does not theorise that Britain’s decline from the glory days of Empire are because of this conspiracy, he comments that the Oxbridge Conspiracy has very cleverly managed decline, as if that is all that Oxbridge now has to offer. Curiously, since it is mainly Britain’s industry that has decline to the point of invisibility, he does not stop to ask himself why that is so – it can hardly be because of its Oxbridge influence, since that, according to Mr. Ellis, is conspicuous by its absence.

I have certainly learnt a good deal by reading this book, individuals who I did not imagine were Oxbridge products, apparently are. Which goes some way to disproving Mr. Ellis’ thesis that Oxbridge produces a monocultural “type”, who are the root of all things mediocre (at best) or bad (at worst). Admittedly, as an Oxbridge man (Queens’ College, Cambridge) and member of the archetypical Oxbridge profession (the Bar), maybe I am suffering from the same blindness that Mr. Ellis accuses all Oxbridgians of suffering, but I just don’t get the criticism he is trying to level. Mr. Ellis admits that the Oxbridge admissions system has done its best to make entry far less exclusive, and the fact that a bare majority of entrants might still be public school has far more to do with the paucity of State education than anything else. In particular, and with this I am entirely in agreement, he criticises the criminal abolition all but 164 of the grammar schools by both Labour and Conservative Governments in the 1960s-70s, and the negative effect that this inevitably had on State school admissions to the ancient Universities. Notwithstanding this, both Universities have bent over backwards to attract deserving students from State schools – unhelped by the ever-downward descent of standards there.

An alternative view to Mr. Ellis’ might be stated thus: Oxford and Cambridge are England’s best Universities, and attract the best candidates. That those graduates consequently have better career prospects than others, and eventually gain a majority of the Country’s (and possibly many of the World’s) best jobs, is hardly surprising. This is not a conspiracy, but something of which those two Universities, and the Country, ought to be proud.

Finally, this book was written in 1994, and revised in 1995. A survey of all the “top” positions carried out in 2012 would make an interesting comparison. Mr. Ellis theorises that far from the Oxbridge influence diminishing over the years it had increased and he predicted it to either maintain its pre-eminence or increase. I would be most interested to see whether that prophesy has been fulfilled in the 17 or 18 years since the book was written. I rather suspect it has not.