Once you invest the fifteen minutes that it takes to get through the setup for this book, Mitford's Pursuit Of Love, you'll have certain expectations for what is to follow in this episode. Almost certainly in Love In A Cold Climate we'll see the mockingly entitled young set getting their comeupp...
I’ve written before about why I love Nancy Mitford’s biographies so much. First off, she writes exactly the sort of narrative history that floats my boat: history that treats the past as, first and foremost, an endless, rich vein of gold to be mined for storytelling yarn, fascinating characters a...
She knew, or thought she knew, that Frenchwomen were hideously ugly, but with an ugliness redeemed by great vivacity and perfect taste in dress... So all in all she was unprepared for the scene that met her eyes on entering...This is Mitford's unapologetic memoir of her own romance with a charmi...
In this biography of Frederick the Great, Nancy Mitford carefully unravels the complex character of one of Europe's brilliant rulers. She re-creates his unhappy youth; his reforming zeal, which paved the way for a united Germany; and his spectacular wars.
In a moment of vintage seeking I embarked (or more likely re-embarked, I am %70 certain I read this long ago), on Nancy Mitford's Don’t Tell Alfred, having read a very engaging article about Mitford in an old newspaper clipping. The clipping itself is probably vintage, going by the age of the yel...
After reading two of Nancy Mitford’s historical biographies, I can say that I have at the very least learned exactly who Nancy likes to invite to her parties. Ladies should be elegant, witty, memorable, beautiful if at all possible, and at the very least aware that one must dress if not. They sho...
"Nineteenth century historians, shocked by the contemplation of such a merry, pointless life, have been at great pains to emphasize the boredom from which, they say, the whole Court and the King suffered. No doubt a life devoted to pleasure must sometimes show the reverse side of the medal and it...
Life, she thought, is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them.The early morning sun shone past her window on to the river, her ceiling danced with water-reflections. The Sunday silence was broken by two swans winging slowly upstream, and then by th...
She had accepted Sally’s invitation with great pleasure and her family’s full consent, and was much looking forward to the visit, partly because she would thus avoid seeing her parents for a whole month, but chiefly because she was devoted to Walter and Sally, and rather in love with Albert. Jane...
‘You must admit that it’s tiresome of them,’ she said to Poppy who, faithful to her rôle of confidante, was perched on a chair beside the bath. ‘After all, I particularly said in both my notes that any communications would be forwarded by my bank, and besides, they could easily have found out whe...
THE ENVELOPE Le luxe est la discipline de l’abondance. ANDRÉ GIDE In 1674 the King began going to Versailles for prolonged visits; the enlarged house was more or less habitable and he was able to take his family, some of the courtiers and the government officials. The mini...
‘Peter looks very pretty in his uniform and is spoiling to be off but doesn’t even leave London for another week,’ she wrote on 9th October, 1939. Early in September: ‘I am driving an ARP car every night from 8-8. So far have only had one go of it and feel more or less OK (it is mostly waiting ab...
On the one or two occasions when she had lifted up the receiver and had heard, instead of the Medical Officer of Health wishing to speak to Sister Wordsworth, ‘This is the Southern Report Centre. Air raid warning Yellow,’ she had experienced such an unhealthy glow of excitement that she felt she ...