Look back, face forward

You will by now doubtless be familiar with the University of Toronto academic Jordan Peterson. He’s the unlikely YouTube star and scourge of political correctness whose book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has become a worldwide bestseller, beloved of serious young men seeking intellectual challenge and good old-fashioned fatherly advice. Summary: ‘Sort yourself out, bucko.’ We don’t really need the likes of Peterson here: we’ve got Ferdinand Mount. The book we should all be reading to sort ourselves out, buckos, is Prime Movers.

Mount is, admittedly, an unlikely intellectual hero. Modest and self-deprecating almost to the point of absurdity, in his memoir Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (2008) he chronicled a life of extraordinary privilege — Eton, Christ Church, head of Mrs Thatcher’s policy unit, editor of the TLS — with the kind of insouciant charm possessed only by those blessed with extraordinary privilege.