Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE
What a great read! It’s easy to see how Nancy Mitford’s witty and merciless skewering of her brother in law Oswald Moseley’s fascist movement (along with the Victorian attitudes of parts of 1930s British aristocracy) would have infuriated parts of her family and driven a lasting wedge between her and them, but kudos to her for taking this on even as a young writer and sticking to her guns — and kudos even more for the execution. This is a hilariously funny satire of British interwar rural society against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, which manages to combine a serious, no-holds-barred analysis with Mitford’s exuberant spirit, total irreverence of establishment figures and symbols, and unfailing sense of the funny and ridiculous. Brava!
Read for Festive Tasks: Door 14 – Games: Read a book written by an author whose last name begins with the letters G, A, M, E, or S. Also a third book for this month’s (M)DWS Author Birthdays challenge, next to Martha Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another and Beryl Bainbridge’s According to Queeney.
Another title to keep in mind, thanks, Ulrike.
You’re welcome. I really enjoyed this — and since the audio version is a fairly recent release (July 2021), I hope they’ll follow up with new audio versions of Mitford’s two “signature” books at some point, too. (I own the Penguin omnibus print edition, but still — one may be allowed to be greedy, rightt?)