Ferdinand Mount

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Ferdinand Mount
Director of Number 10 Policy Unit
In office
1982–1983
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by John Hoskyns
Succeeded by John Redwood
Personal details
Born William Robert Ferdinand Mount
(1939-07-02)2 July 1939
Spouse(s) Julia (née Lucas)
Children 4
Education Greenways School
Sunningdale School
Eton College
Alma mater Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation Writer, 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 Chitterne, an isolated village on Salisbury Plain, didn't go to school until he was almost nine.[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.

Sir Ferdinand, as he is formally styled, 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 Mrs 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

  • Very Like a Whale (1967), novel
  • The Theatre of Politics (1972),
  • The Man Who Rode Ampersand (1975), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 1)
  • The Clique (1978), novel
  • The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage (1982)
  • The Practice of Liberty (1986), novel
  • The Selkirk Strip (1987), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 2)
  • Of Love and Asthma (1991), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 3), Winner of the Hawthornden Prize 1992
  • Communism: A Times Literary Supplement Companion (1992), editor
  • The British Constitution Now: Recovery or Decline? (1992)
  • The Recovery of the Constitution (Sovereignty Lectures) (1992)
  • Umbrella: A Pacific Tale (1994), novel, (Tales of History and Imagination – 1)
  • The Liquidator (1995), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 4)
  • Jem (and Sam): A Revenger's Tale (1999), novel, (Tales of History and Imagination – 2)
  • Fairness (2001), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 5)
  • Mind the Gap: Class in Britain Now (2004)
  • Heads You Win (2004), novel, (Chronicle of Modern Twilight – 6)
  • Private Life 21st Century (2006)
  • The Condor's Head (2007), novel
  • Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (2009), memoir
  • Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us, Simon & Schuster, 2010. ISBN 978-1-84737-798-2
  • 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)
  • Making Nice (2021), novel

See also

Insignia of baronet

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  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. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ www.bl.uk
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Government offices
Preceded by Number 10 Policy Unit
1982–1983		 Succeeded by
John Redwood
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Baronet
of Wasing
1993—		 Succeeded by
Incumbent


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