I have--I won't say a love affair--perhaps an endless curiosity about this highly eccentric English family-- their affectations, their passionate beliefs and their highly individual lives. I am a fan of Nancy's skill, fun, and humor in all her books, and I wish I could say Nancy was just as funny, humorous and witty in person as she was in her books. Well, she was all of that, along with selfish, egocentric, cruel and sometimes incredibly brave and devastatingly wistful.

Nancy was born into the minor aristocracy. Her parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale were two smashingly handsome people; he of the towering rages and enthusiasms and she with such perfect detachment, one wondered if her feet touched the earth at all. They had five daughters, all highly original and one son who was killed in WWII. Nancy, the eldest was a best selling novelist; Pam was the loyal farm girl; Diana, the beauty, first married into the Guiness family then the infamous "Nazi" Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity, who fell in love with Hitler and Nazism and tried to kill herself; Jessica, who also was a writer, became Americanized (which horrified Nancy) and wrote the "American Way of Death"; and Deborah who became the Duchess of Devonshire.

With this background, it is not hard to see how Nancy developed into an unusual woman. In some ways she had it all. She was an embodiment of the Jazz Age, friend to some of the most interesting people of the 20th century (Evelyn Waugh, Winston Churchill, Charles deGaulle) and finally made enough money to support her very patrician tastes in clothes, homes and fine living. Yet her marriage was a farce, and she had a life-long passion for an unsuitable man who was never going to marry her and most of the time ignored her. With all her fame and all her friends, during her last illness she closed the door to everyone but her sisters who she had mostly ignored (with the exception of Diana) for years. Nancy was a great one to shoot herself in the foot. She longed to be loved, but her malicious humor and savage wit drove people away. She was truly unhappy in her love life, but insisted on a gay, nonchalant face to the world and would allow no one close enough to comfort her.

This biography is lively, but does not contain much we didn't know before. It does a good job evaluating Nancy's literary output. The continuity is poor as the author skips back and forth in time enough to confuse the reader. Nancy's great love was France, and she lived most of her adult life in Paris. But the author's long quotations in French by Nancy and her friends are a little tiresome to the average reader. But all in all, an enjoyable read. I think the reader who likes to read of the upper class in the early 20th century will take pleasure in this book. (well-indexed)
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

I found the book very humorous. It was contridictory to many of the current
standards, however quite insightful as to the nature of the cyclical patterns of the
"Upper Class". I would recommend it for anyone interested in
linguistics and the different subjective views of what is correct or incorrect.

I was reading away happily at the original French version (struggling occasionally over some of the older vocabulary) until I realised I really didn't have enough time (essay due in tomorrow evening), so I quickly nipped round to a friend and borrowed this translation.

And it's not good, people, not good.

While parts of it have travelled quite nicely from French over to English, a lot of it is very badly done - some word for word tranlations and FAR too many repetitions of words. For example, I'm sure I came across 'agitation' three times on one page, and I can tell you I ended up more agitated than Mlle de Chartres ever would be after trying to scrape my way through it.

Needless to say, I'll be allowing more time to read these books beforehand so that I don't have to delve into another poorly translated version again.

Get it in French.

This book is written in an unusual format, almost at a remove from the main character. This however, only serves to heighten the passion of the doomed lovers. In some ways it reminds me of mme de tourvil in dangerous liaisons. Unable to help herself falling in love. Knowing she was doing the wrong thing, and hurting the people who love her most, but unable to stop.

I really enjoyed this book,and I'm sure I'll read it again one day. Apparently this is the only decent book this author ever wrote, the rest being pretty unreadable. If you want a historical novel written in an historical period itself then try this.

This is one of my all-time favorite books. The book is quiet, surprising, and lingering. The relationships detailed in intimacy are revealing, and not just the relationship between the lovers. If you have notread this, do so immediately.

There was desperate disappointment when I opened my package to discover that after the single (not particularly interesting) quotation from my favorite writer, there was not a drop more Nancy Mitford in the Nancy Mitford Box. I felt that I had been led to expect some sort of Mitfordian graphic or at the very least more quotes from the blissfully quotable Ms Mitford but there was no happiness in that box for me! The papers, envelopes and postcards are covered with a squiggled design which in no way suggested our divine Miss M. I cannot recommend this terrible exerience to anyone devoted to the work of Nancy Mitford.