Cold Cream – My Early Life And Other Mistakes. Ferdinand Mount/ Bloomsbury, £7.99)

BROUGHT up in a state of ‘Hobohemia,’ a raffish subdivision of the upper class, Mount's sparkling recollections of his childhood glitter with famous names.

His uncle was the author Anthony Powell and like his A Dance To The Music Of Time, this book is thronged with anecdotes of very hue. There are sandwiches with Siegfried Sassoon, German lessons with David Cornwell (John le Carre) and boating trips with Oswald Mosley.

His delight in discovering a 14-year-old Miriam Margolyes – ‘an opulent tumble of dark curls and puppy fat’ – reclining on his landlady’s hearth rug, hoping to pose for Augustus John, is a priceless memoir.

From an erratic start in the depths of Fleet Street, Mount finds himself as adviser and speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher during the early 1980s, so this is also an intimate account of life inside Number 10. Excellent stuff!

CHRIS BURGESS