Sir
Ferdinand Mount
Bt
Director of Number 10 Policy Unit
In office
1982–1983
Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher
Preceded byJohn Hoskyns
Succeeded byJohn Redwood
Personal details
Born
William Robert Ferdinand Mount

(1939-07-02) 2 July 1939
SpouseJulia (née Lucas)
Children4
RelativesSir William Mount
EducationGreenways School
Sunningdale School
Eton College
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford
OccupationWriter, Novelist

Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL (born 2 July 1939), is a British writer, novelist, and columnist for The Sunday Times, as well as a political commentator.

Life

Ferdinand Mount, brought up by his parents in the isolated village of Chitterne, Wiltshire, began school at the age of eight.[1] He then attended Greenways and Sunningdale School before Eton College, after which he went to Christ Church, Oxford.

Mount worked at Conservative Party HQ as Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit during 1982–83, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister[2][3] and played a significant part in devising the 1983 general election manifesto.

Mount is regarded as being on the one-nation or "wet" side of the Conservative Party. He succeeded his uncle, Sir William Mount, in the family title as 3rd baronet in 1993, but prefers to remain known as Ferdinand Mount.[4]

For eleven years (1991–2002) he was editor of the Times Literary Supplement,[5] and then became a regular contributor to Standpoint magazine. He wrote for The Sunday Times, and in 2005 joined The Daily Telegraph as a commentator.[5] He writes for the London Review of Books.[6]

Mount has written novels, including a six-volume novel sequence called Chronicle of Modern Twilight, centring on a low-key character, Gus Cotton; the title alludes to the sequence A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight by Henry Williamson, and another sequence entitled Tales of History and Imagination. Volume 5, entitled 'Fairness', was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2001.[7]

Sir Ferdinand serves as Chairman of the Friends of the British Library[8] and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1991.[9]

Family

The only son of Robert (Robin) Mount, an army officer and amateur steeplechase jockey,[10][1] and Lady Julia Pakenham, youngest daughter of the 5th Earl of Longford, KP, Ferdinand inherited the baronetcy from his uncle Lt-Col. Sir William Mount, Bt, TD, DL, who died in 1993, having had three daughters, including Mary Cameron, JP (b. 1934), mother of David Cameron, former Prime Minister (and Conservative Party leader).[2][11]

The Labour politician Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and his brother, Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford, were Mount's maternal uncles. His maternal aunts were the writers Lady Mary Clive, Lady Pansy Lamb and Lady Violet Powell, the wife of author Anthony Powell.

Sir Ferdinand and his wife, Julia née Lucas, live in Islington; he and Lady Mount have three surviving children, William (b. 1969 and heir apparent to the title), Harry (b. 1971, a journalist) and Mary (b. 1972, an editor who is married to Indian writer Pankaj Mishra).[12]

Works

Fiction

  • Very Like a Whale (1967)
  • The Clique (1978)
  • The Practice of Liberty (1986)
  • The Condor's Head (2007)
  • Making Nice (2021)

A Chronicle of Modern Twilight

  • The Man Who Rode Ampersand (1975)
  • The Selkirk Strip (1987)
  • Of Love and Asthma (1991), winner of the Hawthornden Prize 1992
  • The Liquidator (1995)
  • Fairness (2001)
  • Heads You Win (2004)

Tales of History and Imagination

  • Umbrella: A Pacific Tale (1994)
  • Jem (and Sam): A Revenger's Tale (1999)

Non-fiction

  • The Theatre of Politics (1972)
  • The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage (1982)
  • Communism: A Times Literary Supplement Companion (1992), editor
  • The British Constitution Now: Recovery or Decline? (1992)
  • The Recovery of the Constitution (Sovereignty Lectures) (1992)
  • Mind the Gap: Class in Britain Now (2004)
  • Private Life 21st Century (2006)
  • Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (2009), memoir
  • Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us (2010)
  • The New Few: Power and Inequality in Britain Now or A Very British Oligarchy (2012)
  • The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805–1905 (2015)
  • English Voices: Lives, Landscapes, Laments (2016)
  • Prime Movers: From Pericles to Gandhi (2018)
  • Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca (2020)
  • Big Caesars and Little Caesars: How they rise and fall- from Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson (2023)

See also

Insignia of baronet

References

  1. 1 2 "Stephen Moss interviews writer and author Ferdinand Mount". the Guardian. 25 April 2008. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  2. 1 2 Moss, Stephen (19 November 2010). "Lord Young has found that soundbites sometimes bite back". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
  3. ↑ MacLeod, Alexander (1 December 1982). "Mrs. Thatcher sets up her own advisory team". The Christian Science Monitor.
  4. ↑ Mosley, Charles (ed.) (2003). Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, 107th edn. London: Burke's Peerage & Gentry Ltd. p. 2801 (MOUNT, Bt). ISBN 0-9711966-2-1. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  5. 1 2 Tryhorn, Chris (1 March 2005). "Ferdinand Mount joins Telegraph". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
  6. ↑ E.g., * Ferdinand Mount, "Why We Go to War", London Review of Books, vol. 41, no. 11 (6 June 2019), pp. 11–14. "[H]istorians have tended to weave their narratives around [...] high-flown themes: the struggle to maintain the balance of power, the struggles against fascism and communism, against the French Revolution or German militarism. In reality, most large wars have contained within them a violent and persistent economic conflict. [p. 12.] Not for one second do [the UK's Brexiteers] pause to think how hard-won [Europe's economic integration and peace, within the European Union, have] been. They are the feckless children of seventy years of peace." [p. 14.]
  7. ↑ "Ferdinand Mount | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  8. ↑ www.bl.uk
  9. ↑ "Sir Ferdinand Mount". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  10. ↑ Carey, The Sunday Times review by John. "Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes by Ferdinand Mount". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  11. ↑ Bell, Matthew (28 November 2010). "Still talking turkey". The Independent. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
  12. ↑ Schuessler, Jennifer (27 August 2012). "New Book in Battle Over East vs. West". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
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