***'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 Summerscale***SHORTLISTED 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 Pot...

'[An] erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide' -- Literary ReviewFrom 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 a...

The deliciously sharp new novel from Ferdinand Mount, author of the Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself GoodbyeFerdinand Mount's stinging satireplunges 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 daught...

The Tears of the Rajas is 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 bu...

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 sheer delight’ Times Literary SupplementFerdinand Mount has spent many years writing articles, columns and reviews for prestigious magazines, newspapers and journals. Whether reviewing great published works by some of England's finest authors and poets (both alive and dead) including Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, John le Carré, Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster and Alan Bennett. He also analysed the works of a variety of our Masters covering the past four hu...

Ferdinand Mount has been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millenniaIn this fascinating, and provocative book, he examines the proposals for a political theory from a number of widely different historical figures. Twelve key people, from the great orator and statesman of Ancient Greece (Pericles) to the inspiration of the founding of the state of Pakistan (Muham...

'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 capitali...

This was supposed to be the era when democracy came into its own, but instead power and wealth in Britain have slowly been consolidated the hands of a small elite, while the rest of the country struggles financially and switches off politically. We are now ruled by a gang of fat-cats with fingers in every pie who squabble for power among themselves while growing richer. Bored with watching corrupt politicians jockeying for power, ordinary Britons are feeling disconnected from politics and ...

Fairness is about Helen, the tiny, blonde, serious girl whom the narrator meets when they are both looking after children during a summer vacation in Normandy. Her adventures in search of a morally satisfying life lead her into situations that are neither satisfying nor moral, from the mining boom in Central Africa to the child abuse scandals of the late 1980s. Fairness is the latest novel in Ferdinand's Mount's Chronicle of Modern Twilight which includes The Man Who Rode Ampersand and Of ...

We should have awakened to the sun streaming in from across the valley, but this is not a story about things as they should be, and it was a dark blustery morning, blasting the blossom off the may. Only in the shelter of the high hedgerows down in the lanes streaked with red mud was there ant escape from the wind and the rain.Just as we were putting on our boots, I pinned down the unidentified fear of the night before. I had slept without my asthma pillow. It was not the first time . But t...

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 ultimately Prime Minister.Yet Lord Aberdeen remains an awkward, tragic figure, increasingly at odds with his times, shattered by repeated bereavements, ...