The End of an Era

Mark Field has spent the last two decades in the adrenaline-filled, egotistical and stressful world of Parliament, culminating in two years as a Minister of State in the Foreign Office alongside Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart. Here, he had a remarkable capacity for getting into high-profile scrapes, most famously in his close friendship with future Prime Minister Liz Truss, his role in the pig-gate scandal and his skirmish with protesters at Mansion House.

Mark’s first foray into politics was as a student at Oxford, where, amongst others, he got to know well Boris Johnson, Nick Robinson, David Miliband, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt. He studied alongside his future constituency neighbour, Keir Starmer, in the law library and he recalls with some fondness their early political jousts.

But this is not an entirely conventional memoir.  Interspersed with his account of his time in Parliament, he reflects candidly about his time in public life and the changes that have taken place in the UK during his lifetime. As a baby boomer, he also recognises that his has been a golden generation that has benefited from a range of opportunities now denied to younger Britons. The nation’s unrealistic sense of exceptionalism risks holding us back from the urgent reform now needed in so many of our institutions – from the constitution to our armed services, our universities, our NHS and the civil service. Regrettably, the UK no longer leads the world in any of these fields, and Mark argues here that if there is one Brexit opportunity we should now collectively grasp it is the need to take responsibility for our fate.