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:
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.
Furthermore, the personal was for Sampson also the psychological, even the
psychoanalytical, as this passage from
The Money Lenders shows:
"[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]
