Jon Snow says he owes everything to nepotism.

 

Jon Snow

Jon Snow says that he's a "nepo baby". He says that he owes his success in life to nepotism, his social class, and his social connections. "I would have been nowhere, but for nepotism." His father, the Bishop of Whitby, went to Winchester and Oxford and taught at Eton. Snow went to boarding school where he got abysmal O-Levels and then Scarborough Technical College. He then went to Liverpool University - which his father facilitated - but got slung out for challenging the Chancellor over his support for South African apartheid. His cousin, Peter Snow, put him in touch with the Earl of Longford who gave him a job running a shelter for the homeless called New Horizon.  Peter Snow then got him a job at LBC. By the 1980s, he was a roving reporter for ITN covering wars in Central America and the Washington correspondent for ITN.

 Zoe Williams of the Guardian, who has just reviewed John Snow’s memoirs, says that the 1960s, was a funny era where a well-connected scion of the upper classes - like Jon Snow - would find it impossible to do anything but succeed. I wouldn't signal out the 1960s for being particularly significant. It was also an era of social mobility for many people due to the expansion of the State, which required more bureaucrats.

 The Old Boys Network has been operating a long time. I remember reading about the MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, who went to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge. He was a close friend of Kim Philby. Elliots father, Sir Claude Aurelius Elliott, was the headmaster of Eton. It is said of Sir Claude, that he "knew everybody who was anybody, and nobody who wasn't somebody." Nicolas Elliot got a job with MI6, when he asked Sir Robert Vanisittard, over a glass of champagne at Ascot races, if he could pull some strings and get him in MI6. Sir Robert, who was a friend of Sir Claude Elliot, replied:  "I'm am relieved you have asked me for something so easy." I gather that 'White's' gentlemen's club was a favourite recruiting ground for MI6, and both Sir Claude and his son, were members.

 After playing in a cricket match at Eton, and before he joined MI6, Nichols Elliott, was approached by Sir Neville Bland, a senior diplomat, who offered him a job as honorary attaché at the Hague, where Sir Neville was Britain's Minister. Although Elliot hadn't a clue what the job entailed, he wrote that there was no serious vetting procedure and that Sir Neville had simply told the Foreign Office, that I was all right, because he knew me and had been at Eton with my father.