Ferdinand Mount


Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL, is a British writer, novelist and columnist for The Sunday Times as well as a political commentator.

Life

Ferdinand Mount attended Greenways and Sunningdale School before Eton College after which he went to Christ Church, Oxford.
Mount worked at Conservative Party HQ as Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit during 1982–83, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and played a significant part in devising the 1983 general election manifesto.
Sir Ferdinand, as he is formally styled, is regarded as being on the one nation or "wet" side of the Conservative Party: he succeeded his uncle, Sir William Mount, in the family title as 3rd baronet in 1993, but prefers to remain known as Ferdinand Mount.
For eleven years he was editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and then became a regular contributor to Standpoint magazine. He wrote for The Sunday Times, and in 2005 joined The Daily Telegraph as a commentator. He writes for the London Review of Books.
Mount has written novels, including a six-volume novel sequence called Chronicle of Modern Twilight, centring on a low-key character, Gus Cotton; the title alludes to the sequence A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight by Henry Williamson, and another sequence entitled Tales of History and Imagination. Volume 5 entitled 'Fairness' was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2001.
Sir Ferdinand serves as Chairman of the Friends of the British Library and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1991.

Family

The only son of Robert Mount and Lady Julia Pakenham, youngest daughter of the 5th Earl of Longford, KP, Ferdinand inherited the baronetcy from his uncle Lt-Col. Sir William Mount, Bt, TD, DL, who died in 1993, having had issue three daughters, including Mrs Mary Cameron, JP, mother of David Cameron, former Prime Minister.
Sir Ferdinand and his wife, Julia née Lucas, live in Islington; he and Lady Mount have three surviving children, William, Harry and Mary who is married to Indian writer Pankaj Mishra.

Works