Anthony Sampson

Anthony Terrell Seward Sampson (August 3, 1926–December 18, 2004) was a British journalist. During the 1950s he edited the magazine Drum in Johannesburg, South Africa. On returning to the United Kingdom he began a series of major books with Anatomy of Britain (1963). His main themes were how Britain works, as a state, and large corporations.

Among his other noted works:

• The New Europeans (1968)
• The Sovereign State of ITT (1973)
• The Seven Sisters (a study of the international oil industry) (1975)
• The Arms Bazaar (1977)
• The Money Lenders (1981) and
• Black Gold (about the crumbling of apartheid and the business/financial picture in South Africa) (1987)
• Company Man (1995)
• Mandela: The Authorized Biography (1999)
• Who Runs This Place?: The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century (2004)

As that list indicates, he took an interest in broad political and economic power structure. But what a mere list can't convey is that Sampson saw power as personal, so his books often read like series of interlocked biographies — of arms merchants, oil company executives, etc., according to the theme of each. He was a personal friend and biographer of Nelson Mandela.

"[Bankers] seem specially conscious of time, always aware that time is money. There is always a sense of restraint and tension. (Is it part of the connection which Freud observed between compulsive neatness, anal eroticism, and interest in money?)"

External link

• John Smith, The Guardian, 21 December 2004, "Anthony Sampson" (obituary) [1]