Love In A Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford

[poliphilo]

Nancy Mitford's portrayal of the English ruling classes (I put it in the plural because the upper crust is layered- and permeable- like puff pastry) is affectionate but withering. To think these people- so shallow, so limited in their sympathies and experience, so poorly educated, so barely ethical- were actually in charge of things- and their children's children probably still are- is hair-raising. Love in a Cold Climate is fiction, but every character- more or less- is modelled on a person or persons who really existed- and those who were there at the time say it gets country house society in the 1930s bang to rights. It is funny and sad and joyous- operating in the same universe as Evelyn Waugh (who was Mitford's friend)- but with the difference that Waugh mostly detests humanity and Mitford doesn't.