Books, Arts & Manners: Lady on a Swing

Nancy Mitford: A Biography, by Selina Hastings (Dutton, 274 pp., $19.95)

I was going to say that this is “a gem of a biography,” but Valerie Grove of the London Standard has already said that, so I won’t. I also thought of calling it “a superfluous biography,” because anyone who has read The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford’s two most famous (and highly autobiographical) novels, already knows about her extraordinary family and her unsatisfactory love affairs. But then again, that wouldn’t be quite fair. One of the major joys of Selina Hastings’s book is that she makes Nancy Mitford’s life as entertaining as her novels.

HW

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H. W. Crocker III

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Nancy Mitford: A Biography, by Selina Hastings (Dutton, 274 pp., $19.95)

I was going to say that this is “a gem of a biography,” but Valerie Grove of the London Standard has already said that, so I won’t. I also thought of calling it “a superfluous biography,” because anyone who has read The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford’s two most famous (and highly autobiographical) novels, already knows about her extraordinary family and her unsatisfactory love affairs. But then again, that wouldn’t be quite fair. One of the major joys of Selina Hastings’s book is that she makes Nancy Mitford’s life as entertaining as her novels.