Harry Mount, Author at Catholic Herald

Harry Mount

August 25, 2023

My late godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), had a unique combination of talents. I’ve tried to record some of them in a new book, with tributes to her from friends including David Hockney, Van Morrison and Tom Stoppard. Lindy was a painter, yoghurt-maker and the entrepreneurial chatelaine of Clandeboye, one of Northern Ireland’s

A new slant on timeless tales

September 02, 2021

Harry Mount reviews Charlotte Higgins's new book, 'Greek Myths: A New Retelling' for the September '21 issue of the Catholic Herald

A new slant on timeless tales

August 27, 2021

Greek Myths: A New Retelling Charlotte Higgins Jonathan Cape, £20, 336 pages ________ In Ancient Greek, mythos simply meant a traditional story – and, to modern Greeks, a Mythos means the best beer in the country. The Greek myths, then, are really the best stories ever told – and some of the earliest. As Virginia

Christianity and all that

June 01, 2021

The Treasures of English Churches: Witnesses to the History of a Nation, by Matthew Byrne Shire Publications, £20, 160 pages And Did Those Feet: The Story and Character of the English Church AD 200-2020, by Patrick Whitworth Sacristy Press, £40, 662 pages ________ The Archbishop of Canterbury and every single Anglican vicar and Catholic

A tour of buildings and monuments in Mayfair and St James’s

March 01, 2021

Hidden gems: An intriguing guide to a neglected corner of London

The internet has taken away the joy of boredom

July 02, 2020

Bored, bored, bored … That’s been my coronavirus experience. Luckily, I’ve avoided the plague. But I’ve been thrown on my own inner resources – and found them woefully inadequate. I’ve tiled the tiny floor of my boiler cupboard – badly. I’ve framed two pictures – badly – and hung them in my flat. I’ve read

Diary: The reactionary hacks who turn to the Church

March 12, 2020

Before the journalist and former Private Eye editor Christopher Booker died last year, aged 81, he’d just finished a book, Groupthink: A Study in Self-Delusion, published this week. Under that catch-all heading of Groupthink, Booker nimbly skewers the malaise of the modern age: how an “in-group” polices society with its new form of puritanism, coming down hard on

London’s nearly perfect pub

January 16, 2020

Last Wednesday, at 9pm, I had a splendid choice of murder programmes to watch. There was White House Farm, about the 1985 Jeremy Bamber murders (I’m convinced he did it) on ITV. There was a new series of Silent Witness on BBC One. And, on BBC Two, there was The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming, about

The long twilight of the Roman gods

January 02, 2020

How to Think about God By Marcus Tullius Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman Princeton, 151pp, £13.99/$16.95 This handy little book could just have well been called “How to Think about God – just before Jesus Turned Up”. It is a translation (with Latin on the lefthand page, as in a Loeb) of Cicero’s works On

The morality of dressing well

December 19, 2019

What should you wear at Christmas parties? And how should you look presentable without looking vain? I stumbled upon the answer at the inaugural Idler of the Year Awards, recently held by the Idler magazine in Pushkin House, a charming, 18th-century building in Bloomsbury. The Idler celebrates not so much lethargy as the need to

The sweet, neglected pastures of Latin

November 21, 2019

Long Live Latin by Nicola Gardini, Profile, 256pp, £14.99/$26 Is Latin still alive? Yes, there are some intellectuals like Benedict XVI who can speak Latin. He gave his resignation statement in Latin in 2013 – mirabile dictu! The Vatican now has a marvellous news programme in Latin, too. But these are some of the last

The best drink I’ve had all year is a Stella

November 14, 2019

A new all-women’s club, AllBright, is doing fantastically well in its branches in Mayfair and Fitzrovia. So well, in fact, that it’s opened a branch in Los Angeles and is opening two more in New York and Washington, DC. Why do people join clubs? I speak as a member of the Beefsteak Club and the

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Review: The Blue Guide to Rome

June 06, 2020

“Gripping” and “delicious”: Harry Mount reviews The Blue Guide’s latest offerings for Chapter House. Ever since 1918, Blue Guides have been the best guides to European cities. No other guide has the sheer quantity of facts. For people who want to know why a building is where it is, who built it, when and in what style,