Ferdinand Mount

From being a Downing Street head of policy and speechwriter to becoming an award-winning novelist, Ferdinand Mount has walked the paths of politics, journalism and literature. Join him in the Round Room where he will be talking about his new book, Full Circle, published this June.

After winning a scholarship to Eton and later attending Oxford, Ferdinand tried several jobs including children’s nanny, gossip columnist and bagman to the politician Selwyn Lloyd before surfacing as Margaret Thatcher’s head of policy unit. For many years he was a columnist at the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times before becoming editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

He is now an award-winning author and his novel, Of Love and Asthma (1991) won the Hawthornden Prize in 1992 and his bestselling memoir, Cold Cream (2008), was selected as a Radio 4 Book of the Week. His new book, Full Circle, traces the strange paths by which the ancient world has come to be reborn in our own times.

“An unadulterated joy … Every page is shot through with anecdote and wit, so that the whole experience feels like being at a peculiarly wonderful dinner party … Funny, astute and clever.”
Observer

“Hard to beat. I could read this sort of book for ever.”
Stephen Fry

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