“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Tuesday 5 April 2011

Clegg to end nepotism - but not yet.

Nick Clegg says that he wants to see an end to people getting on in life because of who they know or "who their parents meet at the tennis club".
Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire. His father, Nicholas Clegg CBE, is chairman of United Trust Bank, and is a trustee of The Diawa Anglo-Japanese Foundation where Ken Clarke was an adviser. Clegg's paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was the daughter of a Baron from Imperial Russia whose family fled the Bolsheviks after the revolution. One of his great-great-grandfathers, Ignaty Zakrevsky, was attorney general of the Imperial Russian Senate. One of his great-great aunts was the writer, Baroness Moura Budberg. Clegg's paternal grandfather, Hugh Anthony Clegg, was the editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years.Educated at Caldicott School and Westminster, Clegg spent a gap year as a skiing instructor in Austria, before attending Cambridge University where he was active in the student theatre, acting alongside Helena Bonham Carter in one production. He was captain of the college tennis team.

2 comments:

Jemmy Hope said...

The Soviet era Russians had a word for it, "Nomenklatura".

henry said...

"who their parents meet at the tennis club"

That explains why my life never quite went to plan, my old parents only ever played the geegees.