68: Cold Cream - Ferdinand Mount
Very much a book of two halves. I was totally captivated recently by Mount's book about his aunt Munca's mysterious life, Kiss Myself Goodbye, but this is his own memoir, which preceded it.
First off, he is stupendously posh - his mother was a Pakenham and the early pages are populated by people who really are called things like Boofy. Realisation gradually dawns that 'Uncle Tony' is the famously austere novelist Anthony Powell and 'Cousin Antonia' is Lady Antonia Fraser (and, later, that second Cousin Dave is David Cameron). But, of course, the Mounts have 'no money' so what luck that Eton takes young Ferdy for nothing. He tells some very amusing stories and is honest and self-deprecating - that’s very much his shtick - as well as likeably open about the emotional coolness of his upbringing, and how wrong it was that children weren't given the security of feeling loved, an omission he's put right with his own family ( who, as an aside, include the controversial Harry Mount, former boyfriend and now alleged chum of Carrie Johnson).
Where I really struggled was with the second part, where he becomes an adviser to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. I was never going to find this easy, as my background and political views most certainly do not chime with Ferdinand Mount's, so the general tenor of entitlement and satisfaction in the establishment that pervades this section (and, really, the whole book, despite its undeniable charm) I personally found quite hard to take.
69: The Road to Lichfield - Penelope Lively
Read for the new MN Rather Dated Book Club. 40-year-old Ann, married to the dull Don and with two teenage children, has to make the journey to Lichfield to sort things out when her elderly father is taken into a nursing-home, and soon it becomes a regular pilgrimage, as his decline slowly continues. She meets his neighbour, also married with children, and by degrees they fall into a summer affair.
Beautifully subtle, beautifully written short novel shot through with regret, sadness, acceptance, and wisdom about the passing of time and the ways we deal with the big changes in our lives.