Love In A Cold Climate

Written by:Ben Granger.

I’d long wanted to read a book by Nancy Mitford, as I’d seen her words shining out among the quotation books with a fairly witty hue. Added to the grim fascination of how such an amiable soul could grow among such a grim and horrific family, it seemed an interesting prospect. That being the guess, I read Love In A Cold Climate, because I liked the title.

A book set amongst the upper classes has to have a real quality in its writing for me to off-set my deep seated revulsion against the caste depicted. And at first I was somewhat disappointed. I suppose I was judging her rather unfairly against Dorothy Parker and Stella Gibbons as comic writers from the same vague era, and it was certainly nowhere near as funny as them.

First impressions were unfair however. As I read on I found Mitford had a very real minor genius for characterisation, and for the icy humour and candour which lies in understatement. A great deal of the book’s flair and essence comes from what is unsaid rather than said, an often forgotten trick. The musty, staid estates become brilliantly alive. A wonderful ending too.

Nancy’s deftness of touch genuinely transcends her Munsters upbringing. She is rightly known for her writing, and her politics is rarely mentioned, given the glaring contrast of her Communist sister Jessica and her appalling Fascist sisters Diana and “no brains” Unity. In fact, relatively apolitical and displaying the snobbery of her class as she did, Nancy described herself in her correspondence with Evelyn Waugh as a “milk and water socialist”, by which she simply meant she had renounced the worst inhumanity of her background and embraced the social-democratic progression of Atlee. Sad to reflect how this in itself places her several dozen degrees to the left of our present government.

Posted on April 10th, 2007.

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