Product Details
Life In A Cold Climate

Life In A Cold Climate
By Laura Thompson

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Product Description

This biography draws on Nancy Mitford's highly autobiographical early novels, the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism, and the vast body of letters to her sisters, lovers, and friends such as Evelyn Waugh and Cyril Connolly. Laura Thompson has put together a portrait of a courageous and contradictory woman—a woman who expressed anti-feminist views while living a life of financial and emotional independence; a woman who appeared quintessentially English but who was only wholly able to be herself once she moved to France; a woman who believed implacably that the best response to life's pain was laughter. Approaching her subject with wit, perspicacity, and huge affection, Laura Thompson, like Mitford, makes her serious points lightly. Eschewing cliches about the eccentricities of the Mitford clan, Thompson analyzes the contradictions and complexities at the heart of Nancy Mitford's life and work.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #344820 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-04-22
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 432 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
'[Laura Thompson] writes like a dream' -- Nicholas Lezard 'A sparkling and deliciously readable biography' -- Mail on Sunday 20040418 'Nancy's life was a puzzling set of contradictions, which have been sensitively unravelled by Thompson's detailed research into the life and work of the English novelist... Thompson, like Mitford, writes in a witty, humorous and touchingly personal manner' -- Daily Express 20040416 'Despite Thompson's passionate enthusiasm for Mitford, she offers a balanced and vivacious appraisal of a fascinating if mildly off-putting woman' -- Observer 20040425 'The force of her identification with her subject means that the books and the life's crises are inspected with unprecedented intensity and intelligence' -- Guardian 20040425 'A biography informed by so much love can't be carped at' -- Independent on Sunday 20040425

About the Author
A writer and freelance journalist, Laura Thompson won the Somerset Maughan award for her first book, THE DOGS (Chatto, 1994). After leaving Oxford, where she studied English, she wrote and performed in a highly acclaimed one-woman show about the life and work of Jean Rhys.

Customer Reviews

highly recommended for Mitford fans5
Written in a charming and chatty style not unlike that of Nancy Mitford herself, _Life in a Cold Climate_ analyzes Mitford's life, works, and relationships in an engaging and perceptive way; the book is clearly based on excellent research (including extensive interviews with the two sisters of Nancy still alive when the book was written, Lady Diana Mosley and Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire) and a deep knowledge of Nancy's writings. I highly recommend it for those who want new insights into the complex and controversial Nancy Mitford.