Customer Reviews:
 A five-star autobiography but just one reservation! May 17, 2008
Geoffrey Woollard (Cambridgeshire, England)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Ferdinand Mount has written a five-star autobiography, but I have just one reservation about it despite having enjoyed it immensely.
Mr Mount 'jumps about' rather too much. The ultra-long chapters don't deal consecutively with aspects of his fascinating life. For example, the sad account of his mother's too-early demise is followed much later with episodes where the lady is alive again, and the book requires a degree of concentration that I don't always possess late at night when I do most of my reading.
Mr Mount has already in his fascinating life (and I hope he has many more years to come: we are round about the same age and I can recall some of the people and most of the events described) done more things and worked with more interesting people, not least some of the eccentric circle of his own family, his friends and his acquaintances, than many of us could ever wish for and, whilst I have known just one or two of those mentioned myself, it is such fun to get to 'know' more, even with what can only be 'second-hand' knowledge.
One of the newspaper reviewers has alluded to Mr Mount's 'name-dropping.' I recognise what the reviewer is getting at, for the sub-headings of the five main chapters include the following:
'Skiing with Donald MacLean,' John le Carré at Eton,' 'Miriam Margolyes on the hearthrug,' 'Prince Michael in the dorm,' 'My stepmother and Gore Vidal,' 'Lord Longford on the platform,' 'Harold Wilson and my tape recorder,' My odyssey with Selwyn Lloyd,' 'Keith Joseph's cold,' 'Ian Gow and Dr. Bodkin Adams,' 'The intolerable Alfred Sherman,' 'Jeffrey Archer's joke,' 'The Parkinson affair,' etc., etc.
It falls to a fortunate few to be able drop so many well-known names and the author has every right so to do, for the names are of his relatives, his friends, his close acquaintances and his work colleagues.
Re-reading what I have written thus far informs me that I may have been too harsh in my judgement, for this superb book, so elegantly written (Mr Mount didn't go to Eton for the Wall Game, for which he was ill-suited, but to obtain a classical education, and it shows!), and so eminently readable, not only for its description of the various moving moments of his own life but also for the unique insights into the workings of 10, Downing Street under Margaret Thatcher, is a 'must-read' for anyone with the vaguest interest in English journalism, politics and social life in the 20th century.
By the way, the book's quaint title is explained at the end, and the explanation is a delightful vignette in itself.
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