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  • Published: 3 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241991848
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $22.99

The Pursuit of Love

With Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing




The TV tie-in of Nancy Mitford's classic novel to coincide with the BBC adaptation starring Lily James

'He was the great love of her life you know.'
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.'

Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and let's not even mention the mysteries of sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the hunt for the ideal lover. But finding the perfect match is much harder than any of the sisters had ever dreamed.

Linda is first courted by a stuffy Tory MP and then becomes embroiled with a handsome but humourless communist, before she risks everything on a chance at real, head-over-heels love in war-torn Paris . . .

  • Published: 3 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241991848
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford was born in London on November 28 1904, daughter of the second Baron Redesdale, and the eldest of six girls. Her sisters included Lady Diana Mosley; Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire and Jessica, who immortalised the Mitford family in her autobiography Hons and Rebels. The Mitford sisters came of age during the Roaring Twenties and wartime in London, and were well known for their beauty, upper-class bohemianism or political allegiances. Nancy contributed columns to The Lady and the Sunday Times, as well as writing a series of popular novels including The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, which detailed the high-society affairs of the six Radlett sisters. While working in London during the Blitz, Nancy met and fell in love with Gaston Palewski, General de Gaulle's chief of staff, and eventually moved to Paris to be near him. In the 1950s she began writing historical biographies - her life of Louis XIV, The Sun King, became an international bestseller. Nancy completed her last book, Frederick the Great, before she died of Hodgkin's disease on 30 June 1973.

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Praise for The Pursuit of Love

Utter, utter bliss

Daily Mail

A dazzling comic delight

Fiona Wilson, The Times, Saturday Review

The story's genius lies in its wicked humour, which remains relentlessly uplifting even as the Blitz begin to smash all the hopes of that pre-war arcadia

Olivia Laing, The Guardian

Too spiky and intelligent, I think, to qualify as an altogether cosy read [...] beneath the brittle surface of Mitford's wit there is something infinitely more melancholy at work - something that is apt to snag you and pull you into its dark undertow when you are least expecting it

Zoë Heller, The Telegraph

Nancy Mitford taught the wonderful truth that laughter can see you through the darkest hours of your life

Daily Mail

The Millennial faint-hearted will be appalled by Mitford's depiction of class and gender. But Mitford's triumph is that, as the Radletts live and laugh and cry, we [cry] with them

Julie Parsons, The Irish Times

In her novels Nancy mastered her life, making everyone who was different or difficult into figures of mirth, moving only among the aristocracy, and infusing the world with a spirit of lazy, delightful romance

Natasha Walter, The Independent