Nancy Mitford modelled the characters in her best-known novels on her own unconventional (and at the time of writing, notorious) family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin, Fanny ('the Bolter's girl'), on one of her frequent visits to their country estate: Uncle Matthew the blustering patriarch, owner of that bloodied entrenching tool above the fireplace, who hunts his children with bloodhounds; vague Aunt Sadie, and six children recklessly eager to grow up.
The Pursuit of Love is the story of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward of the Radlett daughters, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then an ardent Communist (whom she follows to the Spanish Civil War), and finally a very wicked and irresistibly charming French duke.
Love in a Cold Climate, again related by Fanny, focuses on Polly Hampton, long groomed for the perfect marriage by her fearsome mother, Lady Montdore, but secretly determined to pursue her own course.

About the Author
Nancy Mitford (Author)
Nancy Mitford was born in London on November 28 1904, daughter of the second Baron Redesdale, and the eldest of six girls. Her sisters included Lady Diana Mosley; Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire and Jessica, who immortalised the Mitford family in her autobiography Hons and Rebels. The Mitford sisters came of age during the Roaring Twenties and wartime in London, and were well known for their beauty, upper-class bohemianism or political allegiances. Nancy contributed columns to The Lady and the Sunday Times, as well as writing a series of popular novels including The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, which detailed the high-society affairs of the six Radlett sisters. While working in London during the Blitz, Nancy met and fell in love with Gaston Palewski, General de Gaulle's chief of staff, and eventually moved to Paris to be near him. In the 1950s she began writing historical biographies - her life of Louis XIV, The Sun King, became an international bestseller. Nancy completed her last book, Frederick the Great, before she died of Hodgkin's disease on 30 June 1973.

Laura Thompson (Introducer)
Laura Thompson attended stage school and Oxford University. She won the Somerset Maugham Award with her first book, The Dogs, and wrote two books about horse racing while living in Newmarket. Her biographical study of Nancy Mitford, Life in a Cold Climate, was published in 2003, followed by Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (2008), A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan (2014), and Take Six Girls: The Lives of the MitfordSisters (2015). She now lives in Richmond.




Book Information
ISBN 9781841594040
Author Nancy Mitford
Format Hardback
Page Count 488
Imprint Everyman's Library
Publisher Everyman
Weight(grams) 607g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 135mm * 30mm