Ferdinand Mount

'[An] erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide' -- Literary Review From troubadours to Twitter: a thousand years of feelings, fads and furious sentiment, from renowned essayist Ferdinand Mount. Whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through delightful snapshots, often mischievous storytelling and a masterly command of history. Mount explores the shifting importance societies have placed on empathy for the misfortunes of others. Each seismic moment, Mount argues, from the French Revolution to Civil Rights, has had a corresponding sentimental revolution that has fuelled great political turning points and come to define human civilization. But no one wants to be accused of being sentimental; its detractors call it soppy, effeminate and populist – the stuff of soap operas and pop songs. The Reformation tried to stamp out excessive emotion, the Victorians resolutely maintained their stiff upper lips and no one loathed sentimentality more than the modernists – and yet, today, Mount argues it is not the stoics who are ruling the roost: we are living in an age of emotion. From the Occitan poets of the 12th century to Paul McCartney' songs, and modern debates around woke, this is a witty insight into the story of emotions and the way they have swayed human history.

'Gloriously inventive, wonderfully entertaining, wickedly knowing . . . Read it and revel' JOHN BANVILLE 'The unsung hero of his generation of novelists . . . Astute, funny and heartbreaking' TANYA GOLD Corruption, destruction, danger and murder: Welcome to the murky world of the super-rich. Timothy ‘Timbo’ Smith, part-time healer and self-styled security analyst, travels down the dark canyons of global capitalism, from short-selling scams in the City to the depleted rainforests of Brazil. His accomplices in this irresistible safari through the late modern world are two reformed alcoholics, the lovely and brilliant Lee ‘Lethal’ Thorold, and her husband Professor Luke Deverill, lecherous Oxford philosopher and caustic computer wizard. Their misadventures are followed at a bewildered distance by the played-out diplomatic correspondent Dickie Pentecost, who tags along mostly because Timbo is the only man who can cure his agonising back and is always one step behind the Machiavellian actions of those who precede him. From the author of the searing satire, Making Nice, comes his most entertaining, perceptive and unflinching novel yet, lifting the veil on the seedy realities of modern life.

A sweeping history of emotion that spans the decades, from renowned author Ferdinand Mount.In this day and age, whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through vivid snapshots, masterly storytelling and bizarre historical anecdotes.Revealing all the weird and wonderful ways people in the past expressed their grief and joy, Mount explores the shifting importance societies have placed on empathy for the misfortunes of others. Each seismic moment, Mount argues, from the French Revolution to Civil Rights, has had a corresponding sentimental revolution that has fuelled these great political turning points.But during this long history, powerful feelings have frequently come under attack. No one wants to be accused of being sentimental; its detractors call it soppy, effeminate and populist – the stuff of soap operas and pop songs. The Reformation tried to stamp out excessive emotion, the Victorians resolutely maintained their stiff upper lips and no one loathed sentimentality more than the modernists – and yet, today, it is not the stoics who are ruling the roost: we are living in an age of emotion.This is a witty, pacey story of the understanding of emotions and the way they have swayed civilisation.

'Gloriously inventive, wonderfully entertaining, wickedly knowing . . . Read it and revel' JOHN BANVILLE'The unsung hero of his generation of novelists . . . Astute, funny and heartbreaking' TANYA GOLDCorruption, destruction, danger and murder: Welcome to the murky world of the super-rich. Timothy ‘Timbo’ Smith, part-time healer and self-styled security analyst, travels down the dark canyons of global capitalism, from short-selling scams in the City to the depleted rainforests of Brazil.His accomplices in this irresistible safari through the late modern world are two reformed alcoholics, the lovely and brilliant Lee ‘Lethal’ Thorold, and her husband Professor Luke Deverill, lecherous Oxford philosopher and caustic computer wizard. Their misadventures are followed at a bewildered distance by the played-out diplomatic correspondent Dickie Pentecost, who tags along mostly because Timbo is the only man who can cure his agonising back and is always one step behind the Machiavellian actions of those who precede him.Readers who loved the author’s earlier stinging satire, Making Nice, will find this novel an even more telling takedown of the way we live now but pretend we don’t.Praise for the author:‘Mount’s storytelling is irresistible’ LITERARY REVIEW‘One of our finest prose stylists’ DAILY TELEGRAPH‘[Mount] exposes such cold truths with such warmth – I am in eternal awe of his writing, wherever I find it’ MARINA HYDE

A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARWho said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it’s become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall."Fast paced and impassioned" -- Sunday Telegraph"Wonderfully wry" -- The Guardian"...a delight" -- Sunday Times"Delicious work, beautifully and acerbically written" -- Wall Street JournalThere is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger. There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump. The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon. The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump’s march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.

The deliciously sharp new novel from Ferdinand Mount, author of the Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself GoodbyeFerdinand Mount’s stinging satire plunges into the dubious world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and the campaign trail in Africa and America. We follow the hapless Dickie Pentecost, redundant diplomatic correspondent for a foundering national newspaper, together with his stern oncologist wife Jane, and their daughters Flo, an aspiring ballerina, and the quizzical teenager Lucy.The whole family find themselves entangled in an ever more alarming series of events revolving around the elusive Ethel (full name Ethelbert), dynamic founder of the soaring public relations agency Making Nice.With echoes of Evelyn Waugh and The Thick of It, Making Nice is a masterly take on the madness of contemporary society and the limitless human capacity for self-deception.

The deliciously sharp new novel from Ferdinand Mount, author of the Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself Goodbye Ferdinand Mount’s stinging satire plunges into the dubious world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and the campaign trail in Africa and America. We follow the hapless Dickie Pentecost, redundant diplomatic correspondent for a foundering national newspaper, together with his stern oncologist wife Jane, and their daughters Flo, an aspiring ballerina, and the quizzical teenager Lucy. The whole family find themselves entangled in an ever more alarming series of events revolving around the elusive Ethel (full name Ethelbert), dynamic founder of the soaring public relations agency Making Nice. With echoes of Evelyn Waugh and The Thick of It, Making Nice is a masterly take on the madness of contemporary society and the limitless human capacity for self-deception.

'Grimly funny and superbly written, with a twist on every page' – Hilary Mantel'Delightfully compulsive and unforgettably original' – Hadley Freeman‘Wonderful, funny and wise’ – Kate SummerscaleSHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021A SUNDAY TIMES, TLS, SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARAunt Munca never told the truth about anything. Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was.What he discovers is shocking and irretrievably sad, involving multiple deceptions, false identities and abandonments. The story leads us from the back streets of Sheffield at the end of the Victorian age to the highest echelons of English society between the wars. An unconventional tale of British social history told backwards, now published with new material discovered by the author about his eccentric aunt, Kiss Myself Goodbye is both an enchanting personal memoir and a voyage into a vanished moral world

The story behind the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millennia

A vivid and poignant collection of essays from one of Britain's foremost columnists and writers of fiction and non-fiction over the past thirty years.

The Tears of the Rajasis a sweeping history of the British in India, seen through the experiences of a single Scottish family. For a century the Lows of Clatto survived mutiny, siege, debt and disease, everywhere from the heat of Madras to the Afghan snows. They lived through the most appalling atrocities and retaliated with some of their own. Each of their lives, remarkable in itself, contributes to the story of the whole fragile and imperilled, often shockingly oppressive and devious but now and then heroic and poignant enterprise. On the surface, John and Augusta Low and their relations may seem imperturbable, but in their letters and diaries they often reveal their loneliness and desperation and their doubts about what they are doing in India. The Lows are the family of the author's grandmother, and a recurring theme of the book is his own discovery of them and of those parts of the history of the British in India which posterity has preferred to forget. The book brings to life not only the most dramatic incidents of their careers - the massacre at Vellore, the conquest of Java, the deposition of the boy-king of Oudh, the disasters in Afghanistan, the Reliefs of Lucknow and Chitral - but also their personal ordeals: the bankruptcies in Scotland and Calcutta, the plagues and fevers, the deaths of children and deaths in childbirth. And it brings to life too the unrepeatable strangeness of their lives: the camps and the palaces they lived in, the balls and the flirtations in the hill stations, and the hot slow rides through the dust. An epic saga of love, war, intrigue and treachery, The Tears of the Rajas is surely destined to become a classic of its kind.

Aldous Cotton, commonly known as Gus, a civil servant of dry and melancholy humour, stands observing the November dawn from his North London doorstep. His calm existence is about to be disrupted by two events: the invasion of that unloved piece of imperial territory on the other side of the world, known as the Selkirk Strip; and the arrival of his wife's mysterious cousin, Alan Breck Stewart, a survivor of mysterious pasts, unwitting provoker of destruction. While the entire country embarks on a patriotic binge, Alan Breck Stewart pursues his own peculiar path, leaving behind him a wake of sexual disaster and personal disintegration. Splenetic journalists, strong-willed women, tortuously bland civil servants and West Country Catholic gentry - all come under Ferdinand Mount's finely ground microscope in this tragi-comedy or manners and morals. And in Alan Breck Stewart he has created one of those extraordinary characters who burst from the page in embarrassing abandon.

In this updated edition to his provocative and ruthlessly frank book, Ferdinand Mount argues that there is a new class divide in Britain which is just as vicious and hard to get rid of as the old one.

'We're a group, like in Mary McCarthy', says one of the girls in the Clique. On the other hand, their style may remind you more of Evelyn Waugh's Bright Young Things. And their know-all panache has a touch of J. D. Salinger's quiz-kid Glass family. But The Clique is unmistakably a satire for its own time.Gunby Goater, an up-and-coming reporter, 'hot or at any rate warmish' from the provinces, arrives in Fleet Street, keen for a taste of the fabulous Sixties. His assignment at the deathbed of the Last Great Englishman leads him into a series of adventures with the Clique, who alternately humiliate and delight him.From the author of The Man Who Rode Ampersand, The Clique is a novel of exuberant wit trained sharply, though not without affection, upon a variety of phonies, conmen, topers and hacks.

Pheasant-shooting on the Wiltshire downs; East-West conflict in a Berlin night club; infighting in city boardrooms; and sexual skirmishing in the Kensington outback, on the fringes of Winkhill golf club and in a smart Basque resort are some of the elements of this novel. The story concerns the Whale family: Hervey, a less than brilliant Tory Minister; his father, an amiable retired Brigadier; his vague wife Cynthia, and their son George, a young man working in a merchant bank. The Whales are solid, passive and prone to daydreams but their respectable façade threatens to crumble when external forces infiltrate their family unit. Very Like a Whale, Ferdinand Mount's first novel, displays quiet wit and elegance as he explores the underlying theme of power in personal relations.

Cold Cream is a sparkling autobiography in the great tradition: wonderfully perceptive, exquisitely rendered and bursting with characters and anecdotes of every shade and hue. A tender, moving and witty portrait of Ferdinand Mount's family and his early life, it follows his bumbling path from his decadent upbringing in the world of 'Hobohemia' to his schooldays at Eton, and from the boozy depths of Fleet Street in the 60s to his years at the vortex of Downing Street in the 80s as speech writer (much to his own bemusement) for Margaret Thatcher. Every sentence radiates with fondness, intelligence and humour in this utterly charming anthology of an eccentric and colourful cast of people who defined their generation.

Heads You Win is a tragicomedy of second chances. After taking early retirement, Gus Cotton is surprised to find himself persuaded by two old friends - a disgraced wheeler-dealer and a convicted drug smuggler - into taking on the City by launching the greatest headhunting company of all time. Added to this mix, the fourth partner in their venture is a beautiful young woman with an alcoholic past. In this, the final volume of his Chronicle of Modern Twilight series, Ferdinand Mount has created a poignant and hilariously funny exploration of the concept that none of us is beyond redemption.

How does Jeremiah Mount, the dealer in pornography, come to be the lover of the Duchess of Albemarle and the colleague of the great Samuel Pepys? In Pepys' Diary, Jem Mount plays a shadowy role, but in Jem's own memories Sam looms large. Friends and drinking partners at first, they become vicious rivals for fame and women. In his struggle to survive and triumph over his adversary in a rackety world, Jemm stumbles into many trades: chemist, butler, soldier, secretary and, now and then, lover.This 'newly discovered autobiography' - with its disconcerting echoes of our own time - takes its dubious hero from the shaky days of Cromwellian England, through the unbuttoned license of the Restoration, to the panic of Monmouth's Rebellion and the Jamaica sugar boom.

British politician and writer, Ferdinand Mount, challenges contemporary beliefs about society and family—including the history of divorce, childcare, and the concept of the nuclear family.In Subversive Family, politician and writer Ferdinand Mount argues that society is shaped by a series of powerful revolutionary movements, the leaders of which, whether they be political ideologues, theologians, feudal lords, or feminist writers, have done their utmost to render the family a subordinate instrument of their purpose but that, in spite of it all, the family endures. Mount maintains that many widely held contemporary beliefs about the family are based on a willful misreading of the evidence: among the myths are that arranged marriages were the norm until this century; that child care is a modern innovation; that in earlier societies children were treated as expendable objects; that the nuclear family is not a 20th-century invention; and that romantic love never existed before the troubador poets glorified adultery. Divorce, he contends, is no great novelty either, he shows that in many times and places it has been almost as easy to obtain as it is today. Far from diminishing the general desire and respect for family life, Mount contends that the provision for divorce has been popularly regarded as an integral part of any sensible system of family law. This study should jolt the reader into a re-assessment of one of the most familiar and ancient institutions, and encourage greater consideration for policies today that support the family.

George Gordon, cousin to Byron, heir to a desolate Scottish estate, superficially enjoys a brilliant career: he dines at Malmaison with Napoleon and Josephine, excavates the Acropolis, shares a night in a hayloft with Metternich, inherits the Earldom of Aberdeen, marries two beautiful women, becomes Foreign Secretary twice and then Prime Minister.