As the American author David Lebedoff shows in The Same Man, his study of Britain’s two greatest 20th-century authors, published today, Orwell and Waugh shared many ideals, preoccupations and fears. Above all they agreed on what constituted a nightmare vision of their homeland - and that is the Britain we live in today. Orwell and Waugh feared the appearance of a new elite made up of the so-called educated classes. They predicted that a New Boy Network based on test-score merit rather than lineage would sprout, which would wield power and influence with a still greater disregard for the “common people” than their predecessors had shown. This lot would conduct themselves not in accordance to a traditional moral code. Rather they would be regulated by the opinion of their own group, that inner circle of, in Orwell’s words, “scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians”. Members of this elite would dread nothing more than failure to conform to one another’s views and behaviour.