Several careers open to talent

There are two ways of writing a successful book about oneself. The first is to be so successful in life that you command attention regardless of your prose style. The second, adopted by Ferdinand Mount, is to place the author in a self-deprecating way at the centre of a whirling mass of colourful and entertaining characters who dance in and out of his life. In this book Mount remains, by his own account, shy, abrupt, rather lazy, an iceberg in his dealings with women. Of course this negative self-portrait does not convince — there must be something else behind. Where have we met before this particular technique? Of course, in the narrator of A Dance to the Music of Time. It comes as no surprise to find that Anthony Powell was our author’s uncle. So was Frank Longford, for his mother was a Pakenham, a fact which to the connoisseur is in itself revealing.