A handy chapter-by-chapter guide to the main groupings - politicians, civil servants, academics, the great and the good and so on - who formed the ruling elite at the time.
While the Blair years have made an awful lot of changes to that traditional old-boy-network cast of British public life, this 1990 study is still well worth reading - the changes are more obvious when one knows where we were fifteen years ago.
Very rare of its type: one of the secrets of the system is that if you're on the inside you're expected to know how it works. If you're on the outside, you won't know (and vice versa). As such, much credit to Paxman for lifting the lid. And the fact that it's still in print after so long is a testament to its worth.