Andrew Adonis is special adviser to Tony Blair (since 1998) and was Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, 2001-3. An Oxford history graduate, he was from 1988 to 1998 successively Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford, Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times, and a columnist and leader-writer on the Observer. His books include studies of the Victorian aristocracy, the rise and fall of the poll tax, the English class system, and the development of modern British government and politics. His biography of Roy Jenkins is forthcoming. Keith Thomas, like Roy Jenkins, was educated