Radlett and Montdore
4 primary works
Book 1
Book 1
Nancy Mitford modeled the characters in her best-known novel on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, visiting their Gloucestershire estate. 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. 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. Her hilarious adventures vividly evoke the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars.
Book 2
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, the story of coldly beautiful Polly Hampton and her aristocratic parents is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of the language.
Book 3