Making Nice

Ferdinand Mount is a novelist, essayist and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2002. He was previously head of the Number Ten Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher. As a journalist, he has contributed regular columns to The Spectator, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times. His novel Of Love and Asthma, part of a six-volume series, A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1992. He lives in North London with his family.

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Ferdinand Mount’s exquisite writing draws you into a gorgeously horrid world of lies, where all authenticity is faked, and where the biggest deceptions are the ones we practise upon ourselves. Perhaps you recognise the place he’s talking about. He exposes such cold truths with such warmth – I am in eternal awe of his writing, wherever I find it.