T here are no prizes for guessing what motivated this book and it wasn’t the Roman.
Though Ferdinand Mount strolls with effortless erudition round the careers of Caesar, Bonaparte, Hitler and even Indira Gandhi, it is the former Prime Minister who is in his sights.
Mount, a baronet, tries to temper his outrage. He is, after all, part of the noblesse oblige tradition, a liberal Conservative who believes in what Lord (Peter) Hennessy has described as the ‘good chap’ school of government, where politicians try to do what’s best for the country.
