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“As Ferdinand Mount has often shown before, his stance as a patrician 'Boho Tory' can be an excellent place from which to dissect the shibboleths of contemporary culture, free as he is from many of the pieties of the liberal left. We find him standing up for a whole series of unorthodox causes, from Sir Clifford Chatterley (whose view of sex has turned out to be much more to our modern taste than Lawrence's idea of 'sex as sacrament') to the potential pleasures of obesity ('the consolations of booze and grub, which on the non-medical pages of your newspaper are rated rather highly').”

—Mary Beard, “From Swindon to Swindon,” a review of Ferdinand Mount, Full Circle, London Review of Books, 17 February 2011, pages 25-26.

“Globalization is a cover story for indecision and fear. It does not drive the concentration of power and wealth according to rational measures of market forces but it sows enough confusion and uncertainty to make decisive action look like too much trouble.”

—David Runciman, “Confusion is power,” a review of Ferdinand Mount, The New Few, or a Very British Oligarchy, Simon and Schuster, 2012, London Review of Books, 7 June 2012, page 3.

“At the end of the dinner, Macmillan was accosted by Rose Price, aflame with drink and an almost Homeric rage, and lambasted for ordering his battalion to send the Cossacks to their death. Macmillan, a cigarette drooping from his lips, turned his strangely flappy hands (weakened by war wounds) outwards in that gesture we came to know so well and replied: 'How else are we to demonstrate our loyalty to Stalin and the Russians?'”

—Harold Macmillan’s reputation was besmirched by his involvement with the handing over of Cossacks, White Russians, and Croats to Stalin and Tito in May 1945, sending thousands of men, women, and children to their deaths, “a black and unforgettable chapter.” The quote is from Ferdinand Mount, “Too Obviously Cleverer,” a review of SuperMac, a biography of Macmillan by D.R. Thorpe, Pimlico, 2011, London Review of Books, 8 September 2011, page 8. Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Rose Price was on the scene and kept a diary, as did Macmillan. The dinner in question took place on 4 June 1945, slightly more than a week after this event.

“Immoral, godless, ignorant, feckless, infantile. And hence unable to sustain family life, utterly heathen, incapable of absorbing education, unable to look after themselves economically, and unfit to take part in politics and government. These are only some of the accusations that have been repeatedly flung against the lower classes. Let us take them in turn and see how much truth there is in them. ”

—Ferdinand Mount, Mind the Gap: the new class divide in Britain, Chapter VI, A Hidden Civilisation

“One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.”

— Ferdinand Mount
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