The deliciously sharp new novel from Ferdinand Mount, author of the Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself GoodbyeFerdinand Mount's stinging satireplunges into the dubious world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and the campaign trail in Africa and America. We follow the hapless Dickie Pentecost, redundant diplomatic correspondent for a foundering national newspaper, together with his stern oncologist wife Jane, and their daught...

'A rollicking account of the class divide in 21st-century Britain.' - Simon Jenkins, The Sunday TimesIn this provocative and ruthlessly frank book, Ferdinand Mount argues that there is a new class divide in Britain which is just as vicious and hard to get rid of as the old one.Through acute observation and vivid illustration - drawing on every aspect of life from soap operas, speech patterns and gardening to education and the distr...

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.

'[An] erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide' -- Literary ReviewFrom troubadours to Twitter: a thousand years of feelings, fads and furious sentiment, from renowned essayist Ferdinand Mount.Whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through delightful snapshots, often mischievous storytelling a...

A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARWho said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it's become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall."Fast paced and impassioned" -- Sunday Telegraph"Wonderfully wry" -- The Guardian...

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, Ferdinan...

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 daug...

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, ...

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside...

The acclaimed author of On Royalty explores the mysteries of English identity in this "witty, argumentative book bursting with good things" ( The Daily Telegraph).A Sunday Times Top Ten BestsellerBeing English used to be easy. As the dominant culture in a country that dominated an empire that dominated the world, they had little need to examine themselves and ask who they were. But something has happened over the past cent...

'Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck.'First published in 1964 The Lucky Country caused a sensation. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past.Popular PenguinsHe just wanted a decent book to read . . .Not too much to ask, was it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane stood on a British railway platform looking ...

Paul Doiron's The Poacher's Son is a sterling debut of literary suspense. Taut and engrossing, it represents the first in a series featuring Mike Bowditch.Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive—his own fatherGame warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father Jack, a hard drinking woman...