I tend to perk up when I listen to or read interviews with leading thinkers, writers and journalists, especially when they talk about their families. I admit that I sigh slightly when I hear the comment that their parents were professors, writers, teachers, diplomats, journalists etc. While it shouldn’t take away from their achievements, how many from the intellectually elite were in fact born into this life? Could Dietrich Bonhoeffer have been anything other than a successful leader, thinker, scientist, or doctor depending on his choice?

But perhaps this is just confirmation bias. I’m remarking when academics beget academics, and not noting the counter examples. I just finished a biography of Martin Luther, whose father was a coal miner. My youngest brother has been spending time researching our family origins. They can best be described as humble – the word ‘labourer’ crops up a lot, and in the 19th century it seems our ancestors moved from a poor part of Wales to Manchester for work. We’ve come up with little colour so far – it seems the poor leave less trace than those a little higher up the scale, as noticed by my brother’s girlfriend as she also researches her family tree. Where we do know details, the news is inevitably bad – alcoholic, orphan, mistreated, etc.

In some ways, our family history is similar to many who benefited from the dramatic social change of the 20th century. Labouring / mining / fishing jobs have all but disappeared. A government training scheme mid-career changed the prospects for my unemployed father, backed up by a move to the south of England for work with a bank. University education became far more accessible, and the three sons ended up in respectable white collar work (journalist, pilot, teacher).

We like to look at the elites and feel that they got lucky at birth, though we rarely apply the same question to ourselves. A friend on Facebook recently joked that in job interviews, in America they ask ‘what can you do?’, in France they ask ‘what diplomas do you have?’ and in Cote d’Ivoire they ask ‘who do you know?’ (lit. who sent you? (Qui t’a envoyé?)). How would it feel to work hard and show talent but be in a society in which only those with connections could succeed? A society in which it might be hard pressed to dream at all?