Making NiceĀ byĀ Ferdinand Mount
Ferdinand Mount'sĀ Making NiceĀ takes place in the murky world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and on the campaign trail in America and Africa. Our protagonist is the hapless Dickie, lately the diplomatic correspondent for a London financial newspaper. He and his wife Jane, an oncologist, and daughters Flo, an aspiring ballet dancer, and Lucy, a teenager of fourteen, find themselves bound up in an ever more alarming series of unfortunate events, revolving around the shady character of Ethel (Ethelbert), founder of the dubious publication relations agency Making Nice.
With echoes of Evelyn Waugh's novelĀ ScoopĀ and TV series The Thick of It, as well as thinly veiled portraits of Cambridge Analytica and political personae known to many,Ā Making NiceĀ is a masterly take on the madness of contemporary society. Indeed, if there is one central theme to this most accomplished novel, it is the limitless human capacity for self-deception.
This is Ferdinand Mount at his very best.Ā Making NiceĀ is something that only a man with his intelligence, wit, perception and sense of the ridiculous could write and pull off so brilliantly. Following the critical and commercial success of his family memoirĀ Kiss Myself Goodbye, which read at times like a novel, Mount's devoted fans will not be disappointed with this raucous and highly enjoyable work of fiction.
About the Author
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 doomedĀ Daily Sketch. He later surfaced, slightly to his surprise and everyone else's, as head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit and later editor of theĀ Times Literary Supplement. He is married with three children and two grandchildren and has lived in Islington for half his life.
Apart from political columns and essays, Mount has written a six-volume series of novels,Ā A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, which began withĀ The Man Who Rode Ampersand, based on his father's racing life, and includedĀ Of Love And AsthmaĀ (he is a temporarily retired asthmatic), which won the Hawthornden Prize for 1992. He also writes what he callsĀ Tales of History and Imagination, includingĀ Umbrella, which the historian Niall Ferguson called 'quite simply the best historical novel in years'.
Ā
Ā Paperback |Ā 256 pages
Ā 135 x 216 x 21mm | 280g
Ā 01 Oct 2021
Ā Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Ā Bloomsbury Continuum
Ā London, United Kingdom
Ā English
Ā 1472994388
Ā 9781472994387
Ā
Condition:Ā Very Good
An ex-library book that does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. No obvious damage to the cover, and theĀ book is covered in plastic. The spine label is visible on the front and back covers. No missing or damaged pages,Ā very minor creasing on the first page, but no other creasingĀ or tears. No underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. May be very minimal identifying marks on the inside cover. Very minimal wear and tear.