Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes [Paperback]

Let me get a niggle or two out of the way before I express my enjoyment of this delightful book. Ferdinand Mount does warn us in his foreword that he will follow Mark Twain, who had written that `the right way to do an autobiography [is to] start at no particular time of your life; wander at will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it at the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime.' This `stream of consciousness' way of writing can be a little exhausting, especially when in the four long chapters there is never any natural break where one could put the book down to resume it again later. Mount rightly describes this undisciplined way of writing a book as `self-indulgent'. In addition, this descendant of the aristocratic Pakenham family has a cavalier disdain for the conventional autobiography. He is not concerned about chronology, which at times is quite disconcerting; and though he describes himself on p.298 as `an obsessive genealogist', he does not trouble to tell pedantic readers like myself the names of his grandparents whom he describes; his sister is not given a name until page 91; and it is almost as if he expected you to know that his uncle Tony, first mentioned on page 35, is Anthony Powell - you learn that only on page 56. Cousins abound, often without indication who their parents are; the book could have done with a family tree, and the index rather lazily doesn't name the relationships either. Likewise, the poorly printed little photographs mostly have no captions, and neither has the frontispiece.

But I found this book hugely enjoyable. Mount writes beautifully and with a lovely sense of humour; his relationship with his mother is touchingly recounted; his descriptions, which tumble over one another like a sparkling but sometimes bewildering cascade, of people and of scenes are often memorable. From childhood onwards he has known so many people who are household names for intellectuals: Isaiah Berlin, Harold Acton, the Mitfords, Philip Toynbee, John Betjeman, Siegfried Sassoon - and these are just the people he knew during his adolescence.

Mount is every bit a product of an upper-crust, country gentleman, horse-riding and well-connected background, and he conveys very well how one can be a part of all that and yet observe it with the sardonic wit of an outsider, which in part, with his frequent ill-health and precocious intellectual interests, he was. There are hilariously-written accounts of his schooldays at Sunningdale prep-school (where there were half-holidays every day during near-by Royal Ascot to enable the horse-mad masters to attend) and at Eton - with their preposterously archaic rituals, their sadistic beatings, and schoolboy triumphs and miseries. Writing about his time at Oxford, he is rather good on the dons and about his own deficiencies at that time (a girl friend's father described him as `a character straight out of P.G.Wodehouse), but his descriptions of fellow-students are (with the exception of Auberon Waugh), less successful and probably of more interest to him than to his readers.

He seems to have done nothing much for five years after having left University, but then his bank manager showed concern about his overdraft, and in 1965 connections got him a job on the lugubrious Lord Rothermere's downmarket Daily Sketch as a writer of leaders, for the succinctness of which - they could not exceed 300 words - he says years of a classical education had been a good preparation. We are given a vivid picture of the hard drinking journalists' `culture'. From there he moved on to the Daily Mail and then to the Spectator.

At some stage (Mount only rarely gives dates) he had also joined the Conservative Research Department, and in 1963 (I make it) had become the personal assistant to Selwyn Lloyd, whom Macmillan had recently sacked as Chancellor of the Exchequer during `The Night of Long Knives' and who had been demoted to reviewing the organization of the Conservative Party. We are given an affectionate portrait of this modest and rather inhibited man. Mount is self-deprecating about his own work at the Conservative Research Department, disclaiming any real knowledge of the subjects on which, after the Conservatives had lost the 1964 election, he prepared papers for Sir Keith Joseph. Sir Keith thought highly of Mount's papers - but when Margaret Thatcher joined their meetings, she quickly "sliced them into pitiful shreds".

Apparently it was only at about this time that Mount started to become a serious thinker about the philosophy of conservatism. The ostensibly languorous amateur became a hard-working policy wonk. The last 80 pages, while still being full of sparkling and often witty vignettes about famous and mostly conservative personalities, have some weighty remarks about what he thinks had gone wrong with Britain since the war. He started writing ideological pieces for Encounter. There was nothing `wet' about those; and for all her demolition of his papers twenty years earlier, in 1982 Margaret Thatcher asked him to run her policy unit at No. 10 and to head her speech writing team for big occasions. He can now describe some of the workings of Downing Street. Needless to say, he was one of the group who helped Mrs Thatcher to stand up to and eventually to rout the `Wets' in Cabinet and to some extent in the Civil Service. Some of the most radical proposals formulated by the group would have alarmed even Mrs Thatcher; so they were slowly drip-fed to her over the years. (Mount now becomes distinctly less self-deprecating.) These pages are, I think, a genuine (and entertaining) contribution to the recorded history of the time. Much as he admired Mrs Thatcher, they began to get on each other's nerves. The book more or less ends with his resignation soon after her second election victory in 1983.

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.

Most of the other reviews capture this book well. Mount's life is a bit of an upper class hoot for at least the first 23 years. The shift in tone is striking when he becomes head of Mrs. Thatcher's policy unit. One visibly sits up at that point.

The book captures the spirit of British life very well. It is all very ad hoc and reminds one again how surprising it is that we have produced a very serious country generally respected on the world stage. We are, of course, proud of being the home of eccentricity, which the book illustrates well.

Some points other reviewers have not made are:

- some points should have been expanded - for example, why does Mount think art ended or was not the same again after Donatello? Many masters followed him. I would be interested in more of Mount's views on this point.
- Presumably there is a second volume waiting - there is nothing after about 1984, including more prominent journalism.
- He reflects on the debate whether Mrs. Thatcher is a Tory at all, given how radical she is or was. He notes her ragged individualism and how small in number her true supporters were (there is hardly anyone at his retirement party).
- The hypocrisy of Anthony Powell - he apparently criticises "War and Peace" as a soap opera. Auberon Waugh called "A Dance to the Music of Time" an upper class soap opera (which is what it is), but Powell stormed out of his position as the Sunday Telegraph Literary Editor on reading this.

I would certainly read Volume 2!