For most of its history, British society has been segregated into classes: the ruling class, the working class, and every class in between. If there was flexibility, it existed in the artistic classes, but even there, access to the best schools was reserved to the upper classes. Vertical ascension was never easy. In the aftermath of World War II, things began to change, especially in certain occupations. By the middle 1950s, in spite of his family's working class origins, Paul Wheeler had secured a place in Oxford that afforded him not only a topflight education, but also access to...