The Pentecost Papers

by Ferdinand Mount

Timothy 'Timbo' Smith, part-time healer and self-styled security analyst, travels down the dark canyons of global capitalism, from short-selling scams in the City to the depleted rainforests of Brazil.

His accomplices in this irresistible safari through the late modern world are two reformed alcoholics, the lovely and brilliant Lee 'Lethal' Thorold, and her husband Professor Luke Deverill, lecherous Oxford philosopher and caustic computer wizard. Their misadventures are followed at a bewildered distance by the played-out diplomatic correspondent Dickie Pentecost, who tags along mostly because Timbo is the only man who can cure his agonising back and is always one step behind the Machiavellian actions of those who precede him.

Readers who loved the author's earlier stinging satire, Making Nice, will find this novel an even more telling takedown of the way we live now but pretend we don't.

Praise for the

'Mount's storytelling is irresistible' LITERARY REVIEW

'One of our finest prose stylists' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'[Mount] exposes such cold truths with such warmth – I am in eternal awe of his writing, wherever I find it' MARINA HYDE

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 11, 2025

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.