The End of an Era

During nearly two decades in the adrenaline-filled, egotistical and stressful world of Parliament, Mark Field had a remarkable capacity for getting into high-profile scrapes - most famously in his close friendship with future Prime Minister Liz Truss, his role in David Cameron's Piggate scandal and his skirmish with protesters at Mansion House. From his first foray into student politics at Oxford, where he got to know David Miliband, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, to his years as a Foreign Office Minister alongside Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart, Mark casts an unsparing eye over forty years of British political life. Crammed with vivid pen portraits of some of the most influential political figures of our age, this wry and incisive memoir also reflects candidly on the changes that have taken place in the UK during Mark's lifetime. Recognising that his has been a golden generation that has benefited from a range of opportunities now denied to younger Britons, Mark emphasises how our unrealistic sense of exceptionalism risks holding us back from the urgent reform now needed in so many of our institutions. Above all, he argues that post-Brexit, it is the Conservative Party's failure to ensure we take responsibility for our own fate that has led to its rapid decline and fall.