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In this day and age, whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through vivid snapshots, masterly storytelling and bizarre historical anecdotes. Revealing all the weird and wonderful ways people in the past expressed their grief and joy, Mount explores the shifting importance societies have placed on empathy for the misfortunes of others.

Timothy ‘Timbo’ Smith, part-time healer and self-styled security analyst, travels down the dark canyons of global capitalism, from short-selling scams in the City to the depleted rainforests of Brazil. His accomplices in this irresistible safari through the late modern world are two reformed alcoholics, the lovely and brilliant Lee ‘Lethal’ Thorold, and her husband Professor Luke Deverill, lecherous Oxford philosopher and caustic computer wizard.

Ferdinand Mount’s stinging satire plunges into the dubious world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and the campaign trail in Africa and America. We follow the hapless Dickie Pentecost, redundant diplomatic correspondent for a foundering national newspaper, together with his stern oncologist wife, Jane, and their daughters, Flo, an aspiring ballerina, and the quizzical teenager Lucy.

There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback; it is an ever-present danger.

Aunt Munca never told the truth about anything. Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was. What he discovers is shocking and irretrievably sad, involving multiple deceptions, false identities and abandonments.