LAURA THOMPSON is a writer and journalist. In all, she wrote eight novels and four biographies (of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XIV, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great). She began writing novels while in her twenties. A beauty and a wit, she became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, and a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. She grew up with her five sisters and one brother on the family estate. 'Entirely original, inimitable, and irresistible.' - The Spectator 'Mitford, describing in a tart and easy fashion the diverting activities of a titled English family, is mocking, good-tempered, and very funny.' - The New YorkerĪbout the Author NANCY MITFORD (1904-1973) was the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale. 'Nancy Mitford's art at its best is so fine, so beautifully shimmering with wit and gaiety, that it creates a standard of its own.' - The New Republic 'Utter, utter bliss.' - The Daily Mail (London) Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Together these hilarious novels vividly evoke the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars. Love in a Cold Climate focuses on Polly Hampton, long groomed for the perfect marriage by her fearsome mother, Lady Montdore, but secretly determined to find her own path. The Pursuit of Love follows the travails of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward Radlett daughter, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then an ardent communist, and finally a French duke named Fabrice.

Uncle Matthew is the blustering patriarch, known to hunt his children when foxes are scarce Aunt Sadie is the vague but doting mother and the seven Radlett children are recklessly eager to grow up.

We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, visiting their Gloucestershire estate. Nancy Mitford modeled the characters in her two best-known novels on her own famously unconventional family. About the Book The Pursuit of love originally published in London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945 - Love in a cold climate originally published in London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949.īook Synopsis A hardcover omnibus of the comic masterpieces that made Nancy Mitford famous: madcap tales of growing up among the privileged and eccentric in England and finding love in all the wrong places.

The pursuit of love in a cold climate