He is also yet another humanities graduate from Oxford in his forties. That means that out of the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer, the leader of the opposition and the shadow chancellor, the only one of them who is not a white man in his forties with a humanities degree from Oxford is George Osborne. That’s not because he is secretly black, or transgender, or went to a provincial university, or studied chemistry: it’s because he doesn’t turn forty until May.
—
John Lanchester, “Short Cuts”, London Review of Books, 17 February 2011, p. 24
