Nancy Mitford
Tuscan escapades: Villa Coco, by Andrew Sean Greer, reviewed
An American archivist, hired to catalogue an elderly baronessa’s antiques, finds himself drawn into increasingly absurd adventures in the Italian countryside
Jessica was the only Mitford worth taking seriously
But her unfailing humour does help lighten a solid new biography that focuses on her tireless campaign for social justice
The summer I dwelt in marble halls
Gill Johnson recalls the glorious months she once spent in the ‘gilded labyrinth’ of a Venetian palazzo, employed as an English tutor to an aristocratic Italian family
Mitfordian mischief
It takes chutzpah to tackle a national treasure as jealously loved and gatekept as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.…
Playwright’s notebook
I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 60 years. There are piles of the damn things in archives and covered…
Under the radar
I’d been expecting the BBC to make a dreadful hash of The Pursuit of Love, especially when I read that…
The smelly, snobbish death of the public loo
I blame Nancy Mitford: she made the English so frightened of saying ‘toilet’ that now they have hardly any left…
The frog prince
It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…
Long life
I am embarrassed not by people using ‘non-U’ expressions but by people who still care about such things
