Corridors of Power by C.P. Snow

Lord Lufkin summoned Margaret and me to a dinner-party at twenty-four hours' notice, just as he summoned many guests. He had done the same for thirty years, long before his great success had come: he had done it during the years when he was hated: and still his guests had obeyed.

That February night – it was in the week after my visit to Cambridge – we trooped dutifully into Lufkin's drawing room in St James's Court. No one could have called it a cheerful room. Lufkin had had it panelled in dark pine, and there was not a picture on the walls except a portrait of himself. No one went to Lufkin's expecting a cheerful party. His gifts as a host were negative. Yet in that room there were standing a couple of Ministers, a Treasury boss, the President of the Royal Society, a fellow tycoon.