In the early Fifties the Hon. Angus Ogilvy, after National Service in the Scots Guards and three agreeable years at Trinity College, Oxford, approached his father, the 12th Earl of Airlie, with his plan 'to do something in the City'. The old earl gruffly dismissed the idea with three monosyllables: 'They're all crooks.' The Earl's warning, which was ignored, seems to come up like a ghost at the feast throughout this remarkable book.

LRB 23 September 1993 | PDF Download