The End of an Era

Mark Field spent two decades in the adrenaline-filled, egotistical and stressful world of Parliament, culminating in two years as a Foreign Office Minister alongside Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart. During his time in Parliament, he had a remarkable capacity for getting into high-profile scrapes, most famously in his close friendship with future Prime Minister Liz Truss, his skirmish with protesters at Mansion House and the David Cameron Piggate controversy. Marks first foray into politics was as a student at Oxford, where, amongst others, he got to know Nick Robinson, David Miliband, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt. He studied law at St Edmund Hall alongside his future constituency neighbour Keir Starmer and recalls with some fondness their early political jousts. But this is not an entirely conventional memoir. Interspersed with his account of his time in Parliament, Mark reflects candidly about his time in public life and the changes that have taken place in the UK during his lifetime, recognising that his has been a golden generation that has benefited from a range of opportunities now denied to younger Britons. Above all, Mark emphasises how our unrealistic sense of exceptionalism risks holding us back from the urgent reform now needed in so many of our institutions, arguing that if there is one Brexit opportunity we should now collectively grasp, it is the need to take responsibility for our fate.