Cold Cream

A BBC Radio Four Book of the Week, Cold Cream received fantastic reviews in hardback This is a book to stand beside Alan Clarke's diaries, Brian Thompson's KEEPING MUM (winner of the Costa Biography Award), Xandra Bingley's bestselling BERTIE, MAY AND MRS FISH, Tim Jeal's SWIMMING WITH MY FATHER and John Cornwell's SEMINARY BOY. Think James Lees-Milne without the snobbery. Longlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize 2008

A pitch-perfect memoir, brilliantly funny, wise and moving, of family, friends and political life over the last sixty yearsCold Cream is a sparkling autobiography in the great tradition: wonderfully perceptive, exquisitely rendered and bursting with characters and anecdotes of every shade and hue. A tender, moving and witty portrait of Ferdinand Mount's family and his early life, it follows his bumbling path from his decadent upbringing in the world of 'Hobohemia' to his schooldays at Eton, and from the boozy depths of Fleet Street in the 60s to his years at the vortex of Downing Street in the 80s as speech writer (much to his own bemusement) for Margaret Thatcher. Every sentence radiates with fondness, intelligence and humour in this utterly charming anthology of an eccentric and colourful cast of people who defined their generation.