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Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 27, 2023
This book comprises five different memoirs: two of childhood, the first focussing on Mount’s mother and her relatives and the second on his father and his family. Then there’s two shorter pieces on Oxford, and Mount’s putative career in journalism respectively, followed by a long, long bit on Mount’s work for the Tory party under Margaret Thatcher, which should be enough to put me off him, but he’s such a self-deprecating, funny (especially when he leaves childhood behind and starts meeting people like Lord Rothmere, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson), absurd, ironical, entertaining writer, it’s hard to take against him.
If you like gossipy tangential writing about bright young things before, during and after the war, with a lot of name dropping, from Unity Mitford to David Cameron (via Celia Johnson, Donald McLean, Isaiah Berlin, the teenage Miriam Margoyles, Ian Fleming, Lord Longford, Siegfried Sassoon, John Le Carré, Malcolm Muggeridge and more – many, many more) you will enjoy the first two sections. If you are a little bored by the lower-upper classes doing very little to earn money whilst at the same time having parties and somehow falling on their feet, then you won't. Mount is still alive – 84 years and counting, which is quite a success given that his mother died in her forties and father in his fifties.
NB: You will need to read the book overlooking the attitudes of “of the times”, e.g. Oswald Mosley’s attempt to rape his daughter-in-law is passed over as an amusing anecdote of what an old goat he was, rather than a vile old misogynist racist.
If you like gossipy tangential writing about bright young things before, during and after the war, with a lot of name dropping, from Unity Mitford to David Cameron (via Celia Johnson, Donald McLean, Isaiah Berlin, the teenage Miriam Margoyles, Ian Fleming, Lord Longford, Siegfried Sassoon, John Le Carré, Malcolm Muggeridge and more – many, many more) you will enjoy the first two sections. If you are a little bored by the lower-upper classes doing very little to earn money whilst at the same time having parties and somehow falling on their feet, then you won't. Mount is still alive – 84 years and counting, which is quite a success given that his mother died in her forties and father in his fifties.
NB: You will need to read the book overlooking the attitudes of “of the times”, e.g. Oswald Mosley’s attempt to rape his daughter-in-law is passed over as an amusing anecdote of what an old goat he was, rather than a vile old misogynist racist.
April 30, 2021
Ferdinand Mount is a witty writer who knows many people, so the book is littered with the all sorts of folks, many or all of whom you may know of. I knew of only a few, so for much of the book I didn't really know who he was talking about. In some cases it didn't matter, but in others it would have been a boon. Nevertheless, I was going along just fine until I got to more modern times. He talks way too much about Margaret Thatcher and the politics of her era -- politics and policies that he seems to have been in favor or, well of course, he worked for her devising policy. But what killed it for me was his remark about someone he knew who had gone off to fight in the Spanish Civil War with the "Reds." Francisco Franco overthrew a democratically elected government. Those who fought against him to restate that government came from different political positions. Some were communists, socialists, anarchists, and others were what we would now call liberals. They were all democrats who were fighting against a fascist leader. Franco never entered into World War II, but Hitler and Mussolini supported him in the Civil War. It was German bombers that bombed the town of Guernica. Franco was a fascist. So to simplify who the Spanish republicans were by calling them "Reds" is to be ignorant or at the far end of the right wing. This made me lose trust and interest in his political ramblings.
June 9, 2023
I had the idea to start reading the memoirs of obscure people. Rather than great figures like Churchill, an account of whose life is naturally dominated by world events that he helped shape, I would read about someone who didn’t make a great contribution but who nonetheless has an entertaining and insightful life story.
Cold Cream was my first attempt and it soon became clear I’d chosen it under a misapprehension. Some academic or other recommended it as one of the most charming and humane memoirs they’d read. Exactly what I was looking for! But after only a few pages it was clear that Mount’s background is landed gentry and his mother, ‘Lady Pakenham’, was acquainted with all manner of notable people. Isaiah Berlin, Harold Acton, a Mitford Sister, and many other minor notables, make appearances. This was not the quaint memoir I was looking for. We follow Mount from one privileged setting to another. I can’t remember ever feeling the acute sense of social exclusion that I had reading it.
Such and such a person was said to have been an ‘Oppidan’ scholar (which my spellcheck, and no doubt Mount’s, refuses to acknowledge as a word) or to have been ‘in College’ at Eton. With the help of Google I can say that an Oppidan scholar is a student at Eton who has excelled academically but who is not in College, the house consisting entirely of boys like Mount who sat competitive exams to secure their place.
Such things and many others give the distinct impression that while Mount may have been banking on sales to ordinary readers, his true audience is the elite establishment from which he came.
The last third is dedicated entirely to his period in the Conservative Research Department which he would go on to head. This was before and during the reign of Margaret Thatcher, the most ideological of prime ministers, and so his role in the CRD was highly significant. But gone is the homely charm of the earlier sections, replaced by an anorak’s preoccupation with the minutiae of government.
Whatever its flaws it is elegantly written, the eloquence never forced, and the story is often charming, amusing or poignant. Mount’s parents had all the eccentricities you’d expect of that time and their class, with some extra thrown in for good measure.
Cold Cream was my first attempt and it soon became clear I’d chosen it under a misapprehension. Some academic or other recommended it as one of the most charming and humane memoirs they’d read. Exactly what I was looking for! But after only a few pages it was clear that Mount’s background is landed gentry and his mother, ‘Lady Pakenham’, was acquainted with all manner of notable people. Isaiah Berlin, Harold Acton, a Mitford Sister, and many other minor notables, make appearances. This was not the quaint memoir I was looking for. We follow Mount from one privileged setting to another. I can’t remember ever feeling the acute sense of social exclusion that I had reading it.
Such and such a person was said to have been an ‘Oppidan’ scholar (which my spellcheck, and no doubt Mount’s, refuses to acknowledge as a word) or to have been ‘in College’ at Eton. With the help of Google I can say that an Oppidan scholar is a student at Eton who has excelled academically but who is not in College, the house consisting entirely of boys like Mount who sat competitive exams to secure their place.
Such things and many others give the distinct impression that while Mount may have been banking on sales to ordinary readers, his true audience is the elite establishment from which he came.
The last third is dedicated entirely to his period in the Conservative Research Department which he would go on to head. This was before and during the reign of Margaret Thatcher, the most ideological of prime ministers, and so his role in the CRD was highly significant. But gone is the homely charm of the earlier sections, replaced by an anorak’s preoccupation with the minutiae of government.
Whatever its flaws it is elegantly written, the eloquence never forced, and the story is often charming, amusing or poignant. Mount’s parents had all the eccentricities you’d expect of that time and their class, with some extra thrown in for good measure.
July 25, 2022
I have loved all Ferdinand Mount's books until this one which was not to my taste. He mentions a lot of famous people along the way but I found this book boring. Although he is a wonderful writer, I didn't like the writing style of this book. This is the first time I ever found one of his books boring. I gave up three-quarter way through.
June 15, 2021
I would say this book tops my list of “required me to google a word or name most frequently”. Hugely interesting and entertaining throughout, how he recalls and documents his life and that of those around him in such detail is beyond me!
September 1, 2022
I’ve actually been struggling with this
Book for over a week. The author possesses an absolute talent for name dropping and making what should have been fascinating, mundane. I’m off to find something more interesting, chick lit perhaps...
Book for over a week. The author possesses an absolute talent for name dropping and making what should have been fascinating, mundane. I’m off to find something more interesting, chick lit perhaps...
March 6, 2014
Oliver Ford Davies reads:
Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939, the son of a steeplechase jockey, and brought up on Salisbury Plain. After being educated at Eton and Oxford, he made various false starts as a children's nanny, a gossip columnist, bagman to Selwyn Lloyd, and leader-writer on the doomed Daily Sketch. He later surfaced, slightly to his surprise and everyone else's, as head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit. "Cold Cream" offers us an unrivalled, intimate account of life inside Number 10 during those years.
Among the beautifully turned recollections is sadness too: the loss of his grandfather, termed 'one of the Paladins of Gallipoli' by Churchill, and the unbearable slow and lonely death of his mother. "Cold Cream" is a portrait of a generation as well as a pitch-perfect anthology of experience, where every sentence is a joy to read.
"Cold Cream", published by Bloomsbury in April 2008, is a sparkling memoir that reads like a non-fictional A Dance to the Music of Time.
Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939, the son of a steeplechase jockey, and brought up on Salisbury Plain. After being educated at Eton and Oxford, he made various false starts as a children's nanny, a gossip columnist, bagman to Selwyn Lloyd, and leader-writer on the doomed Daily Sketch. He later surfaced, slightly to his surprise and everyone else's, as head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit. "Cold Cream" offers us an unrivalled, intimate account of life inside Number 10 during those years.
Among the beautifully turned recollections is sadness too: the loss of his grandfather, termed 'one of the Paladins of Gallipoli' by Churchill, and the unbearable slow and lonely death of his mother. "Cold Cream" is a portrait of a generation as well as a pitch-perfect anthology of experience, where every sentence is a joy to read.
"Cold Cream", published by Bloomsbury in April 2008, is a sparkling memoir that reads like a non-fictional A Dance to the Music of Time.
May 22, 2013
interesting glimpse into the lives of the very posh, the people who know everyone and get influential positions through their connections. this chap is David Cameron 's mother's cousin. his mother was a pakenham, sister of lord longford etc etc. interesting anecdotes of the great and the good, Henry blofeld at Eton already doing the cricket commentaries and so on.
Want to read
July 23, 2010I have no idea who this person is, but his life story sounds fascinating and the reviews are effusive.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews