LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

Nancy Mitford’s askance look at the English eilte circa 1930.

Whatever you think of the Mitfords - be they Nazi sympathisers or Communists - Nancy had a ‘knack’ when it came to writing about those around her. It does seem painfully obvious that the book is rife with in-jokes and thinly veiled parodies of her nearest and dearest which, in my opinion, detracts from the story’s narrative. The book centres on the events that happen around Fanny, a tangential character to the main goings on which revolve around the continual circle of balls, engagements, scandal and general upper-classness. The fact that Fanny’s children are rarely mentioned - her husband hardly at all - shows where Fanny’s simple interest lie - especially with the arrival of Canadian Cecil - the golden heir - into the staid scene of Oxfordshire life, and it’s subsequent transformation by him. Unfortunately, the tale is from a bygone era and, as such, does lose some of its relevance and empathy as it now reads as a rose-tinted look back at a yesteryear that never really existed anyway. That said, it is still a witty and pithy snapshot of English genteel life - complete with its endemic racism - before the advent of the Second World War and the dismantling of aristocratic society.