Career
editIn 1951 Sampson went to Johannesburg, South Africa, to become editor of the magazine Drum, remaining there for four years.[1] After his return to the United Kingdom he joined the editorial staff of The Observer, where he worked from 1955 to 1966.
He was the author of a series of major books concerning the distribution and wielding of power in Great Britain. His Anatomy series started with Anatomy of Britain (1962) and ending with Who Runs This Place?: The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century (2004). For a generation, he developed a network of contacts from amongst the rich and powerful. He was known as 'the man who knew everybody'.[2] He dissected the nation's body politic: parliament, civil service, and other major social institutions. He added to the political mix the top twenty companies and corporations and came to the conclusion 'Looking back on the landscape of power which I have surveyed in this book, whether in the regions of government or of business, I find it hard to recognise it as belonging to the British democratic tradition, with its small clusters of self-enclosed, self-serving groups on the peaks and the populace on the plains below.' [3] He took an interest in broad political and economic power structures, but he also saw that power was personalised by the major characters of the period. The end result was his 'Anatomy' of the nation, six books that spanned one of the most dynamic periods in British history in terms of the development of the The Global Village. His approach was to focus on the traits and characteristics of people who interacted to wield power through the institutions, answering better than most Lenin's famous question 'Who? Whom?'.[4]
He occasionally offered psychoanalytical interpretations of these power players, as in this passages from The Money Lenders:
"[Bankers] seem specially conscious of time, always aware that time is money. There is always a sense of restraint and tension. (Is it part of the connection which Freud observed between compulsive neatness, anal eroticism and interest in money?)"
Sampson was a personal friend of Nelson Mandela before Mandela became politically active. In 1964 Sampson attended the Rivonia Trial in support of Mandela and other ANC leaders, and in 1999 he published the authorised biography of Mandela.[5]
Sampson was also a founding member of the now defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP).[1]
Sampson's personal archive, catalogued by the Bodleian Library, was made public for the first time in 2012.[2]
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
Krempelswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b McCrum, Robert. "Anthony Sampson: the private world of the man who knew everyone". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 November 2015.
- ^ Sampson, Anthony (2004). Who Runs This Place?. London: John Murray. p. 372. ISBN 978-0-7195-6566-3.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ McCrum, Robert. "Anthony Sampson: the private world of the man who knew everyone". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 November 2015.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Thompsonwas invoked but never defined (see the help page).