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The hard lessons The Pursuit of Love teaches us about romance

A flatlay of some of Nancy Mitford's most notable works. 

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Reading lists

Where to start with Nancy Mitford

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast drama collection

Nancy Mitford: Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate & More

BBC Radio adaptations of Nancy Mitford's most famous novels and acclaimed biography of Madame de Pompadour plus bonus programmes 
 
The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two bestsellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate; her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress; and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life. 
 
The Pursuit of Love 
This bittersweet tale follows the fortunes of Fanny Logan and her eccentric aristocratic cousins, the Radletts, as they embark on disastrous love affairs and misconceived marriages while searching for Mr Right. 
 
Cast 
Lord Radlett - Rolf Lefebvre 
Lady Radlett - Joan Matheson 
Fanny - Susan Maudslay 
Linda - Jane Knowles 
Matt - Brian Hewlett 
Captain Davey Warbeck - Godfrey Kenton 
Emily - Joan Hart 
Tony Kroesig - Michael Spice 
Lord Merlin - John Rye 
Bessie - Olwen Griffiths 
Mrs Fletcher - Barbara Mitchell 
The Bolter - Cecile Chevreau 
Other parts played by Sion Probert, George Raistrick, Alan Rowe and William Sleigh. 
Adapted by Alan Melville. Produced by Norman Wright. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 23 February 1974 
 
Love in a Cold Climate 
A glamorous invitation to a grand party at Hampton - home of the fantastically rich Montdores and their beautiful daughter Polly - brings Fanny into the world of 1920s high society: and in and out of love when the temperature drops... Amanda Root stars in this sparkling sequel to The Pursuit of Love. 
 
Cast 
Fanny - Amanda Root 
Lady Montdore - Barbara Jefford 
Polly - Teresa Gallagher 
Veronica - Jenny Howe 
Uncle Davey - Jon Strickland 
Aunt Emily - Patience Tomlinson 
Aunt Sadie - Tessa Worsley 
Uncle Matthew - Ioan Meredith 
Boy Dougdale - Stephen Critchlow 
Jassy - Sarah-Jane Holm 
Victoria - Tilly Gaunt 
Cedric - William Hope 
Alfred - Tom Beard 
Dramatised by Claire Luckham. Directed by Marion Nancarrow. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 3 May 1999 
 
The King's Favourite 
Based on Mitford's Madame de Pompadour, this three-part drama vividly evokes the colourful atmosphere of 18th Century Versailles, and Louis XV's tempestuous relationship with his adored mistress, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour. 
 
Cast 
Narrator - Alan Melville 
Duc d'Orléans - Patrick Tull 
Madame de Ventadour - Katherine Parr 
Infanta Maria of Spain - Elizabeth Proud 
Louis XV (as a youth) - Nigel Anthony 
Duc de Bourbon - James Thomason 
The Queen - Pauline Letts 
Louis XV - Edward de Souza 
Lebel, concierge - Robin Browne 
Marquise de la Ferté - Margot Boyd 
Monsieur Poisson - Harold Kasket 
Madame d'Etioles - Moira Lister 
Monsieur d'Etioles - John Gabriel 
Lasmartre, a huntsman - David Timson 
Lady of the Court - Olwen Griffiths 
Produced by Norman Wright. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10-24 December 1971 
 
Dearest Evelyn, Darling Nancy 
Adapted from the witty correspondence of lifelong literary friends Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford, this entertaining, gossipy 'conversation in letters' stars Timothy West and Prunella Scales. 
 
Cast 
Evelyn Waugh - Timothy West 
Nancy Mitford - Prunella Scales 
Adapted by Alan Bell. Produced by Pete Atkin. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 30 December 1993 
 
Greatest Lives - Nancy Mitford 
Grace Dent loves Nancy Mitford for her wit, and for the way in which she showed women that it was possible to live your life fully and unconventionally. Matthew Parris asks what it is about Nancy that so inspires Grace, with the aid of Mitford biographer Lisa Hilton. 
Produced by Beth O'Dea. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 22 January 2013 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

BBC Radio adaptations of Nancy Mitford's most famous novels and acclaimed biography of Madame de Pompadour plus bonus programmes 
 
 The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two bestsellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate; her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress; and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life. 
 
 The Pursuit of Love 
 This bittersweet tale follows the fortunes of Fanny Logan and her eccentric aristocratic cousins, the Radletts, as they embark on disastrous love affairs and misconceived marriages while searching for Mr Right. 
 
Cast 
 Lord Radlett - Rolf Lefebvre 
 Lady Radlett - Joan Matheson 
 Fanny - Susan Maudslay 
 Linda - Jane Knowles 
 Matt - Brian Hewlett 
 Captain Davey Warbeck - Godfrey Kenton 
 Emily - Joan Hart 
 Tony Kroesig - Michael Spice 
 Lord Merlin - John Rye 
 Bessie - Olwen Griffiths 
 Mrs Fletcher - Barbara Mitchell 
 The Bolter - Cecile Chevreau 
 Other parts played by Sion Probert, George Raistrick, Alan Rowe and William Sleigh. 
 Adapted by Alan Melville. Produced by Norman Wright. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 23 February 1974 
 
 Love in a Cold Climate 
 A glamorous invitation to a grand party at Hampton - home of the fantastically rich Montdores and their beautiful daughter Polly - brings Fanny into the world of 1920s high society: and in and out of love when the temperature drops... Amanda Root stars in this sparkling sequel to The Pursuit of Love. 
 
Cast 
 Fanny - Amanda Root 
 Lady Montdore - Barbara Jefford 
 Polly - Teresa Gallagher 
 Veronica - Jenny Howe 
 Uncle Davey - Jon Strickland 
 Aunt Emily - Patience Tomlinson 
 Aunt Sadie - Tessa Worsley 
 Uncle Matthew - Ioan Meredith 
 Boy Dougdale - Stephen Critchlow 
 Jassy - Sarah-Jane Holm 
 Victoria - Tilly Gaunt 
 Cedric - William Hope 
 Alfred - Tom Beard 
 Dramatised by Claire Luckham. Directed by Marion Nancarrow. 
 First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 3 May 1999 
 
 The King's Favourite 
 Based on Mitford's Madame de Pompadour, this three-part drama vividly evokes the colourful atmosphere of 18th Century Versailles, and Louis XV's tempestuous relationship with his adored mistress, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour. 
 
Cast 
 Narrator - Alan Melville 
 Duc d'Orléans - Patrick Tull 
 Madame de Ventadour - Katherine Parr 
 Infanta Maria of Spain - Elizabeth Proud 
 Louis XV (as a youth) - Nigel Anthony 
 Duc de Bourbon - James Thomason 
 The Queen - Pauline Letts 
 Louis XV - Edward de Souza 
 Lebel, concierge - Robin Browne 
 Marquise de la Ferté - Margot Boyd 
 Monsieur Poisson - Harold Kasket 
 Madame d'Etioles - Moira Lister 
 Monsieur d'Etioles - John Gabriel 
 Lasmartre, a huntsman - David Timson 
 Lady of the Court - Olwen Griffiths 
 Produced by Norman Wright. 
 First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10-24 December 1971 
 
 Dearest Evelyn, Darling Nancy 
 Adapted from the witty correspondence of lifelong literary friends Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford, this entertaining, gossipy 'conversation in letters' stars Timothy West and Prunella Scales. 
 
Cast 
Evelyn Waugh - Timothy West 
 Nancy Mitford - Prunella Scales 
 Adapted by Alan Bell. Produced by Pete Atkin. 
 First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 30 December 1993 
 
 Greatest Lives - Nancy Mitford 
 Grace Dent loves Nancy Mitford for her wit, and for the way in which she showed women that it was possible to live your life fully and unconventionally. Matthew Parris asks what it is about Nancy that so inspires Grace, with the aid of Mitford biographer Lisa Hilton. 
 Produced by Beth O'Dea. 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 22 January 2013 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Love in a Cold Climate & The Pursuit of Love

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

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.

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.

Highland Fling

Nancy Mitford's first novel, a set of completely incompatible and hilariously eccentric characters collide in a Scottish castle, where bright young things play pranks on their stodgy elders until the frothy plot climaxes in ghost sightings and a dramatic fire. 
 
Inspired in part by Mitford's youthful infatuation with a Scottish aristocrat, her story follows young Jane Dacre to a shooting party at Dulloch Castle, where she tramps around a damp and chilly moor on a hunting expedition with formidable Lady Prague, xenophobic General Murgatroyd, one-eyed Admiral Wenceslaus, and an assortment of other ancient and gouty peers of the realm, while falling in love with Albert, a surrealist painter with a mischievous sense of humour. 
Light-hearted and sparkling with witty banter, Highland Fling was Mitford's first foray into the delightful fictional world for which the author of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate later became so celebrated. 
 
'A delightful comedy of manners' - The Times

Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) was born in London, the eldest child of the second Baron Redesdale. She had written four novels, including Wigs on the Green (1935), before the success of The Pursuit of Love in 1945, which she followed with Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). She also wrote four works of biography. Nancy Mitford was awarded the CBE in 1972.

Pigeon Pie

Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results. 
 
One of Mitford's earliest novels and written before Christmas 1939, Pigeon Pie is delivered with a touch lighter than that of her later masterpieces but no less entertaining. This comedy combines glamour, wit, and a fiendishly absurd plot into an irresistible literary confection. 
 
'This sparking and deliciously acid commentary of the social world.' - The Scotsman

Now a major series on BBC and Prime Video directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James and Andrew Scott

The Pursuit of Love

One of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written, Nancy Mitford's classic is now a major BBC and Prime Video series directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James, Andrew Scott and Dominic West 
 
'He was the great love of her life you know.' 
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.' 
 
Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover. 
 
But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris . . . 
 
NANCY MITFORD'S WICKEDLY FUNNY SERIES CONTINUES IN LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE AND DON'T TELL ALFRED. 
 
***** 
 
'Utter, utter bliss' Daily Mail 
 
'A pleasure as intense as inheriting a perfect pearl necklace, or finding a silk dress in a vintage shop that fits like a glove' Caitlin Moran, Harper's Bazaar 
 
'Peerless' Zoe Heller

Too spiky and intelligent, I think, to qualify as an altogether cosy read [...] beneath the brittle surface of Mitford's wit there is something infinitely more melancholy at work - something that is apt to snag you and pull you into its dark undertow when you are least expecting it

'He was the great love of her life you know.' 
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.' 
 
Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and let's not even mention the mysteries of sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the hunt for the ideal lover. But finding the perfect match is much harder than any of the sisters had ever dreamed. 
 
Linda is first courted by a stuffy Tory MP and then becomes embroiled with a handsome but humourless communist, before she risks everything on a chance at real, head-over-heels love in war-torn Paris . . .

With Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing

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'A masterpiece ... The Pursuit of Love is one of the funniest books ever written' India Knight, The Times 
 
Nancy Mitford's brilliantly witty, irreverent stories of the upper classes in pre-war London and Paris conjure up a world of glamour, gossip and decadence. In The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing, her extraordinary heroines deal with armies of eccentric relatives, the excitement of love and passion, and the thrills of the social Season. But beneath the perfectly timed comic dialogue, these novels are also bittersweet reminders of the brevity of life and love. 
 
With an Introduction by Philip Hensher 
 
'A kind of perfection' Olivia Laing, Guardian 
 
'Peerless ... beneath the surface of Mitford's wit, there is something infinitely more melancholy at work' Zoe Heller

Born into one of the aristocracy's more eccentric families and educated at home with a clutch of siblings, Mitford used childhood experience, lightly fictionalised, in her comic novels. She also wrote biographies, translated from the French and edited a celebrated symposium on English Aristocrats.

In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, this is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of the language.

Nancy Mitford

Abridged Edition

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
The Pursuit of Love, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. 
 
The Pursuit of Love is about the love adventures of Fanny Logan's cousin, Linda Radlett, who is beautiful, brave and fun. Linda finally finds love and seems happy, but this is the 1930s and her country will soon go to war with Germany. What will happen to Linda then?

Nancy Mitford

Penguin Readers Level 5: The Pursuit of Love (ELT Graded Reader)

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