Of Love And Asthma

Exceedingly stylish and entertaining novel. The ability to combine the serious with the comic so adroitly is rare and admirable.

Ferdinand Mount has been editor of the Times Literary Supplement since 1991. Of Love and Asthma, which forms part of the series, A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for 1992. Umbrella, the first of his Tales of History and Imagination, was described by the Oxford historian Niall Ferguson as 'quite simply the best historical novel in years'. He is also well known as a political columnist and essayist and has written several works of non-fiction including The Subversive Family and The British Constitution Now

We should have awakened to the sun streaming in from across the valley, but this is not a story about things as they should be, and it was a dark blustery morning, blasting the blossom off the may. Only in the shelter of the high hedgerows down in the lanes streaked with red mud was there ant escape from the wind and the rain.Just as we were putting on our boots, I pinned down the unidentified fear of the night before. I had slept without my asthma pillow. It was not the first time . But this was the first time I had slept without it and not properly noticed until the morning after. This must, I though, be love. Would it be punished to?

The Man Who Rode Ampersand

The man who rode Ampersand was in fact, an amateur jockey named Harry Cotton. Harry is a compulsive gambler. The resulting decline in his fortunes takes him through three decades of adventures, melancholy, heroic, and comic by turn, which cut a broad swathe of disorder through provincial race meetings, 'one -night cheap hotels' and three luxurious redoubts of the fabulously rich. The inhabitants and frequenters of these places are every bit as bizarre as their surroundings.

Fairness

'The tone is Evelyn Waugh at his most witty and achingly wistful. A delight' Daily Mail

Ferdinand Mount's earlier novel, Of Love and Asthma, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for 1992. Umbrella, the first of his Tales of History and Imagination, was described by the Oxford historian Niall Ferguson as 'quite simply the best historical novel in years'. He is also well known as a political columnist.

Fairness is about Helen, the tiny, blonde, serious girl whom the narrator meets when they are both looking after children during a summer vacation in Normandy. Her adventures in search of a morally satisfying life lead her into situations that are neither satisfying nor moral, from the mining boom in Central Africa to the child abuse scandals of the late 1980s. Fairness is the latest novel in Ferdinand's Mount's Chronicle of Modern Twilight which includes The Man Who Rode Ampersand and Of Love and Asthma.

The Condor's Head

Enjoyable, sophisticated, highly intelligent historical novel about Americans in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution. Seen from the naive yet entertaining perspective of Wm Short, secretary to Thomas Jefferson.

Ferdinand Mount was editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2002. He is the author of a number of highly praised novels; his historical fiction includes Jem and Sam and Umbrella. He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1992. A columnist and political journalist, he also writes hard-hitting non fiction. He lives in London.

A fair-haired young man from Virginia sees a dark girl rowing on the lake at Versailles and he falls in love. She turns out to be the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld, known as Rosalie, married to a man twice her age who also happens to be her uncle. It is the spring of 1875 and the young American, William Short, nicknamed Wm, has crossed the Atlantic to serve as secretary to his adoptive father Thomas Jefferson at the Paris embassy. Lodging on the Champs Elysees with Jefferson's two young daughters and their teenage slave Sally Hemings, Wm becomes the darling of the free spirits of the ancien regime, who want to copy everything American, including revolution and the pursuit of happiness. 
 
But this is a time when nothing runs straight, certainly not the pursuit of happiness. Together and apart, Wm and Rosalie endure the bloodiest days of the Terror when everyone loses their heads or their illusions except for one man, but that man is about to become President of the United States. 
 
Stylish, intelligent and witty, The Condor's Head is by turns tense and erotic, incredibly funny and unbearably sad. It includes the real-life letters of Wm and Rosalie and Jefferson, some never published before. It also incidentally reveals the truth about the Third President and Sally Hemings.

Heads You Win

'Richly inventive. Intelligent wit... elegiac charm... wonderfully funny' - Sunday Times

Sophisticated comedy-what gives it its distinction is the quality of observation and the unusual marriage of high spirits with melancholy awareness of the passing of time

Here is an imagination that effortlessly brings character after character to valiant, preposterous, malevolent or desperate life. Here is a writer who deserves to be far more widely read

It has a lightness, a breadth... an impressive energy and a humane comedy... Entertaining and affecting

Why is he not spoken of in the same breath as Amis, Barnes and co? One of the best novels I have read this year

The only bad thing about this novel is that it had to end

Ferdinand Mount is a reviewer, influential collumnist and political commentator. He has written for the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times, and was editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2003. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Of Love and Asthma (Vintage), the first of the Chronicle of Modern Twilight Series, and has since written the bestselling memoir Cold Cream and, most recently, The New Few: A Very British Oligarchy. He lives in London.

Heads You Win is a tragicomedy of second chances. After taking early retirement, Gus Cotton is surprised to find himself persuaded by two old friends - a disgraced wheeler-dealer and a convicted drug smuggler - into taking on the City by launching the greatest headhunting company of all time. Added to this mix, the fourth partner in their venture is a beautiful young woman with an alcoholic past. 
 
In this, the final volume of his Chronicle of Modern Twilight series, Ferdinand Mount has created a poignant and hilariously funny exploration of the concept that none of us is beyond redemption.

Jem (and Sam)

This is a novel that wears its learning lightly. The extensive research is woven seamlessly into the plot and illuminates the setting

This is a marvellously vivid and enterataining evocation of Cromwellian and Restoration England. Mount paints from a rich palette, but the brushwork is stylishly economical... When is a historical novel not a historical novel? When it is written by Ferdinand Mount. He is in danger of giving the genre a good name'

The story smoothly takes in the Dutch wars, the Plague and Fire... It includes hellish episodes in a groaning Bedlam, as well as sylvan scenes of sport and the superior delights of the metropolis... Mount gives JEM a fluent, allusive prose with a period flavour that avoids pastiche...vivid...powerful

How does Jeremiah Mount, the dealer in pornography, come to be the lover of the Duchess of Albemarle and the colleague of the great Samuel Pepys? In Pepys' Diary, Jem Mount plays a shadowy role, but in Jem's own memories Sam looms large. Friends and drinking partners at first, they become vicious rivals for fame and women. In his struggle to survive and triumph over his adversary in a rackety world, Jemm stumbles into many trades: chemist, butler, soldier, secretary and, now and then, lover.This 'newly discovered autobiography' - with its disconcerting echoes of our own time - takes its dubious hero from the shaky days of Cromwellian England, through the unbuttoned license of the Restoration, to the panic of Monmouth's Rebellion and the Jamaica sugar boom.

Umbrella

Quite simply the best British historical novel in years

Mount is a fresh and brilliant historical writer; he brings a haunted and scorned statesman sympathetically to life and makes the past breathe again

Umbrella has a powerful, melancholy and peculiarly English charm... a most affecting story

George Gordon, cousin to Byron, heir to a desolate Scottish estate, superficially enjoys a brilliant career: he dines at Malmaison with Napoleon and Josephine, excavates the Acropolis, shares a night in a hayloft with Metternich, inherits the Earldom of Aberdeen, marries two beautiful women, becomes Foreign Secretary twice and then ultimately Prime Minister. 
 
Yet Lord Aberdeen remains an awkward, tragic figure, increasingly at odds with his times, shattered by repeated bereavements, loathed, abused and eventually driven out of office by his fellow countrymen for his doomed efforts to prevent the Crimean War.

Ferdinand Mount

Recovery or Decline?

In this book the former head of Mrs Thatcher's policy unit looks at the state of the British Constitution at a crucial time in its history, arguing that recent years have seen an increased willingness to monitor itself on the part of the Establishment, but that more audacious reforms are needed to restore full confidence in Parliament, government and the legal system.

Ferdinand Mount

Books by Ferdinand Mount

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter