Home › Books › Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World'…
Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything
by
58/99
Critics
61/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
27/99
Rating
89/99
Volume
48/99
Rating
74/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
In his punchy follow-up to Moneyland, Oliver Bullough's Butler to the World unravels the dark secret of how Britain placed itself at the centre of the global offshore economy and at the service of the worst people in the world… The Suez Crisis of 1956 was Britain's twentieth century nadir, the moment when the once superpower was bullied into retreat. In the immortal words of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, 'Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.' But the funny thing was, Britain had already found a role. It even had the costume. The leaders of the world just hadn't noticed it yet. Butler to the World reveals how the UK took up its position at the elbow of the worst people on Earth: the oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters. We pride ourselves on values of fair play and the rule of law, but few countries do more to frustrate global anti- corruption efforts. We are now a nation of Jeeveses, snobbish enablers for rich halfwits of considerably less charm than Bertie Wooster. It doesn't have to be that way.
Preview
Reviews
"An urgent account of Britain's history of welcoming corrupt capital."
"He dates the shift to the Suez crisis in 1956, the year that Britain's imperial apparatus finally collapsed, and the establishment cast around for another source of wealth to keep it in the style to which it had long become accustomed."
"It is hard to imagine a more timely book than Oliver Bullough's damning account of Britain's role in facilitating oligarchs and criminals in their acquisition of billions of pounds' worth of ill-gotten gains ..."
"[An] impressively detailed and frequently enraging exposé ..."
"This highly readable but thoroughly depressing book is an attempt to explain how Britain became the money-laundering capital of the world."
"The more apt word for members of this class would be enabler or opportunist: Butler to the World is really a story about the legacy of empire and the sorry state of a country that finds itself acting as a factotum for the international plutocracy ..."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!