A snob is easy to recognise but curiously hard to define. In this lively book, the biographer and novelist DJ Taylor analyses the concept’s long centrality to English life, drawing on a wealth of literary and historical examples. He is especially good on the Victorian era, when the “transfer of power from the landed aristocracy to the commercial and professional classes” gave birth to a million Mr Pooters. There are vigorous mini-portraits of archetypal 20th-century snobs, such as the diarist James Lee-Milne and the novelist Anthony Powell. Taylor is less sure-footed, however, when it comes to the present: though he attempts a taxonomy of contemporary snobbery via fictionalised portraits of various snob “types” (the “progressive snob”, the “City snob”, and so on), he doesn’t really get to grips with how snobbism has evolved (or, perhaps, broken down?) in recent decades. His, you could say, is a somewhat snobbish conception of who and what a snob is.

The New Book of Snobs is published by Constable & Robinson (£16.99). Click here to buy it for £13.93