![]() ![]() Lord Alconleigh doesn't approve of educating women – or of foreigners, intellectuals and other sundry "sewers" – while fraternising with the opposite sex is limited to hunt meets and rural dances. The children spend most of their days tucked up in the airing cupboard – the only warm place in their vast house – learning the rudiments of sex from Ducks and Duck Breeding and squabbling over the exact nature of Oscar Wilde's crimes. ![]() Linda Radlett, the intensely English heroine, is the most beautiful of an eccentric aristocratic family closely modelled on Nancy Mitford's own. It is a darker book than I first realised, the superficial lightness concealing a faint and beguiling pessimism about love's pursuit and its consequences. I read The Pursuit of Love as a child, mystified and delighted by the spirited Radletts and their terrifying father, and have returned to it at least once a year ever since. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |