The clique: a novel of the sixties

by Ferdinand Mount

'We're a group, like in Mary McCarthy', says one of the girls in the Clique. On the other hand, their style may remind you more of Evelyn Waugh's Bright Young Things. And their know-all panache has a touch of J. D. Salinger's quiz-kid Glass family. But The Clique is unmistakably a satire for its own time.

Gunby Goater, an up-and-coming reporter, 'hot or at any rate warmish' from the provinces, arrives in Fleet Street, keen for a taste of the fabulous Sixties. His assignment at the deathbed of the Last Great Englishman leads him into a series of adventures with the Clique, who alternately humiliate and delight him.

From the author of The Man Who Rode Ampersand, The Clique is a novel of exuberant wit trained sharply, though not without affection, upon a variety of phonies, conmen, topers and hacks.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939. For many years he was a columnist at the Spectator and then the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. In between, he was head of the Downing Street Policy Unit and then editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He is now a prize-winning novelist and author of, most recently, the bestselling memoir Cold Cream. He lives in London.