Product Description

Drawing on Mitford's highly autobiographical early novels - as well as the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism and the vast body of letters to her sisters, lovers and friends such as Evelyn Waugh and Cyril Connolly - Thompson has put together a portrait of a courageous and contradictory woman: a woman who expressed anti-feminist views while living a life of financial and emotional independence; a woman who appeared quintessentially English but who was only wholly able to be herself once she moved to France; a woman who believed implacably that the best response to life's pain was laughter.

Approaching her subject with wit, perspicacity and huge affection, Laura Thompson, like Mitford, makes her serious points lightly. Eschewing clichés about the eccentricities of the Mitford clan (although nonetheless delving into the forces which politically polarised this family of 'contagiously and competitive' girls) Thompson analyses the contradictions and complexities at the heart of Nancy Mitford's life and work. (20040425)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217499 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Nicholas Lezard
'[Laura Thompson] writes like a dream'

Review
'[Laura Thompson] writes like a dream' (Nicholas Lezard )

'A sparkling and deliciously readable biography' (Mail on Sunday )

'Nancy's life was a puzzling set of contradictions, which have been sensitively unravelled by Thompson's detailed research into the life and work of the English novelist... Thompson, like Mitford, writes in a witty, humorous and touchingly personal manner' (Daily Express )

'Despite Thompson's passionate enthusiasm for Mitford, she offers a balanced and vivacious appraisal of a fascinating if mildly off-putting woman' (Observer )

'The force of her identification with her subject means that the books and the life's crises are inspected with unprecedented intensity and intelligence' (Guardian )

'A biography informed by so much love can't be carped at' (Independent on Sunday )

Observer
'Despite Thompson's passionate enthusiasm for Mitford, she offers a balanced and vivacious appraisal of a fascinating if mildly off-putting woman'

Customer Reviews

A Warm & Witty Portrait of a Life in a Cold Climate
More pages have been devoted to the fascinating Mitford Sisters than written by them. And this is no mean achievement given that four of that extraordinary brood became authors. Deborah, the youngest and the only surviving sister, now Duchess of Devonshire, is still writing. It is difficult to imagine a better account of the now legendary Mitford childhood than that drawn and only slightly fictionalised by Nancy in The Pursuit of Love. Jessica's memoirs, Hons and Rebels, give the story a little more edge in Hons and Rebels while Diana's A Life of Contrasts (an understatement if ever there were one) has a Mitford joke on every second page.
For any true Mitford fan Laura Thompson's Life in A Cold Climate is the nearest thing written about the Mitfords without being written by them. The sisters'friend Harold Acton's tribute, not long after Nancy's death, caught the Mitford idiom and mixed with Acton's inimitable style produced an eminently readable life but the proximity and his loyalties meant that it was suffused with restraint. Nancy's other biographer,
Lady Selina Hastings, produced an assured and eloquent memoir in 1985 and now, almost twenty years later, Miss Thompson (acknowledging her debt to Lady Selina) has presented us with by far the best account of Nancy's bitter sweet life so far. Brilliant, insightful, sympathetic, witty and fresh, Thompson's biography exhibits a keen understanding of Nancy and her milieu and an impressive knowledge of her writing. What's more, she appreciates the iconoclastic sense of humour that the Mitford girls shared while giving her own contemporary twist to it.
In writing this life she relied heavily on the memories and impressions of Nancy's two surviving sisters, Diana Mosley and Deborah Devonshire and their wonderfully distinctive voices are heard throughout. Lady Mosley died only months after the book appeared but not before praising it as capturing her sister brilliantly.

A triumph!
I am an avid reader of literary and social biographies but I have NEVER read anything as good as this. Thompson has triumphed with a truly dazzling and original life of a captivating woman. Having read 'Life in a Cold Climate' through from cover-to-cover twice, I now often find myself returning to read a few pages here and there, so seductive, warm and witty is Thompson's prose. Her engagement with her subject is evidently total - the last pages drew actual tears from this reader, at least - but one never feels that objectivity has gone by the board. And there are smiles and laughs aplenty (just as Nancy would have wished).

If I could award 'Life in a Cold Climate' more than five stars out of five, I wouldn't hesitate. As it is, this book takes its place on my list of all-time favourites - and no higher accolade could I award to the work of Mitford herself.

The Best
I have read three biographies this year: Laura Thompson on Nancy Mitford; Laura Thompson on Agatha Christie; Laura Thompson on Nancy Mitford [again]. I have tried other writers, but after Laura Thompson nothing quite measures up. She writes beautifully and movingly - I defy any fan of the Mitfords not to be "in floods" by the last pages.

This is not, however, a book for someone coming to the Mitford saga for the first time: the opening chapters in particular are too discursive for that - probably best to read Selina Hastings, Nancy's "The Pursuit of Love" and Jessica's "Hons and Rebels" first, so that the reader has a clear idea of who the main characters are.

My copy is simply sub-titled: "Nancy Mitford: The Biography" - far more graceful than "A Portrait of a Contradictory Woman". The publishers should do themselves a favour and cut that bit out next time they re-print.