Understated eloquence

It is 50 years since the publication of Very Like a Whale, Ferdinand Mount’s first novel. ‘Mr Mount’s distinguishing feature as a novelist,’ Mary-Kay Wilmers wrote in her sniffy, uncomprehending Times Literary Supplement review, ‘is that his analysis of society is obedient to Conservative economic principles.’ In the ensuing half century Mount has proven resolute in his Conservativism. He had two spells as a gloriously shrewd political columnist in The Spectator, headed Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Policy Unit, wrote the Tory manifesto for the 1983 general election, and edited the TLS under Rupert Murdoch’s proprietorship.

Wilmers’s disapproval of Mount has relaxed a bit — perhaps because he is a closeted baronet who won’t use the title that he inherited. Under her editorship of the London Review of Books, he has become the least fanatical of LRB contributors. His essay ‘Nigels against the World’, published there last May, put the case for a Remain vote more effectively than anything else I read.