Backlisted - The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

Episode Date: January 11, 2016

John, Andy and Mathew Clayton discuss Nancy Mitford's novel 'The Blessing' with Nancy's biographer Laura Thompson. Plus, what it feels like to finish 'Finnegans Wake', 'bloke's books', and the rudest word in the Gloucestershire dialect. Timings: (may differ due to adverts)2'34 - Finnigans Wake by James Joyce 5'06 - Third Girl by Agatha Christie 10'37 - Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano 16'12 - The Blessing by Nancy Mitford* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness ends July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. I just couldn't be bothered. I mean, I'm sure it's really good, but I just, you know, I had such a bad experience in the last Dickens.

Some Dickens is brilliant, but there's great expectations that Andrew Davis did. Hey, i was in rochester before christmas and i accidentally timed my visit to rochester the one of the dickens homes as you know uh timed it to the opening of the new railway terminal at rochester station i emerged from the station at 11 a.m and there were two groups of people there were a load of workmen in orange tabards holding up a sign saying Rochester Station

they'd all been given one letter each and cheering and then next to them were a load of Dickensians loads of Mr Pumblechooks and Mr McCorbers Mr McCorbers yeah it's a big thing in Kent Is it sort of cosplay Dickens?

Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's really terrifying. Yeah. Well, that's what Dickensian is. It's cosplay Dickens. Cosplay Dickens. Let's throw a load of Dickens characters in together and see what happens.

Right. But it's on, like, there's 20 episodes of it. Which is a huge commitment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is one of the things that we sort of feel. They've built a massive set, haven't they? They've basically recreated Dickensian London. It just looks to me like it's the Doctor Who set, doesn't it?

It's like for every episode of Doctor Who that's set in the 19th century. That's why I like Peaky Blinders, because I think it's got integrity, I don't think. Because it looks like Birmingham in the 19th century. It needs to look like Birmingham in the 1970s. That would be... Now that would be, now that would be a show. The Bullring, yeah.

The Bullring, yeah. Got knocked down, of course. I know. Hello and welcome to Backlisted. We're coming to you this evening from the kitchen table of our sponsor, Unbound, the website where readers and writers meet to create great books. I'm John Mitchinson, publisher at Unbound. Hello everyone, I'm Andy Miller. I am the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously.

We're very pleased to welcome here today, as usual, Matthew Clayton, publisher and literary mole. More about moles later. And our special guest this week is Laura Thompson, author of an acclaimed biography of Nancy Mitford, Life in a Cold Climate, and also biographies of Agatha Christie and Lord Lukin. Welcome, Laura. Hello. But as usual, we start where all these podcasts start with the question, Andy, what have you been reading? I want to pick up what we were talking about last time. I've been finishing Finnegan's Way. I've finished. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

That's an extraordinary achievement. The very definition of a smatter there. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Extraordinary achievement. The very definition of a smatter there. Thank you. Polite applause. I finished Finnegan's Wake. I finished it the day after Boxing Day. I did read it on Christmas morning. I did read it on Boxing Day and I finished it. And I just wanted to add

to what we talked about last time, that I had a realisation about halfway through Finnegan's Wake, which was this. I reckon I understood probably 10% of what was happening. But the 10% that I understood gave me enormous pleasure. And actually, you know, the sense of achievement of having read it has given me great pleasure as well. But I've sort of wanted to say to people that Finnegan's Wake, I ended up feeling, wasn't a book that people ought to be scared of. Because in a way, the only person who could ever fully understand Finnegan's Wake is the man who wrote it.

And he died in 1941. You know, I don't believe anyone can understand that book fully other than its author. And therefore, that's not a reason not to read it. That's a reason to read it. You should feel happy to just kind of that's not a reason not to read it. That's a reason to read it. You should feel happy to just kind of... And not a reason not to enjoy it. Yeah, take what you can from it. And you don't read it and think...

Take your 10%, is that what you're saying? Take your 10% and flee. The point is, you don't read it and think this is pure gobbledygook or pure rubbish. You can sense a genius guiding hand behind it. And whatever you take away from it, you should be a genius guiding hand behind it. And whatever you take away from it, you should be happy to take away from it. It seems a weird thing to say, but having finished it,

I can imagine reading it again and getting more from it, you know? Well, you know, is that not our shared definition of literature? It's a book that on the third reading you get more out of it than you did on the first, as opposed to most of the stuff you read. I can also see that Finnegan's Wake is a book... I see why people spiral down into a vortex of never reading or indeed thinking about anything other than Finnegan's Wake. So I've finished that, hurrah.

So as a break from reading Finnegan's Wake, and also because I watched over Christmas on the... The Sorbet. So the adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I'd forgotten, Laura, that you'd written a book about Agatha Christie. So this is wonderful. So I watched And Then There Were None. I watched the first episode and I bailed after that.

I really didn't like it. Loads of people I know really loved it. I'm so glad you didn't like it. I was so style over content. It was awful anyway. Oh, I'm so... Style over content. It was awful anyway. Oh, I'm so glad. So I decided that I would read Third Girl by Agatha Christie. So I've been reading Third Girl by Agatha Christie.

For anyone who doesn't know this book, it was written in 19... It was published in 67 and written in 66. Swinging London. And it's her swinging London novel. Agatha Christie in miniskirts. It's Poirot. It's Poirot. Yeah.

It's Poirot talking about ZLSD and Z-pep pills. And what's brilliant about it is it's got quite a few Chelsea Bohemians and Dolly Birds, and all the Chelsea Bohemians and Dolly Birds speak like characters from a 1930s Agatha Christie novel. Now, I'm going to come in and defend my girl here because I was just about to say, I think their lingo is quite good. No, you really don't think?

I have to declare an interest. I probably love the 1960s more than anything else, more than my own family. So I'm kind of very tuned in for the bum note on that. But there's also, I just must add one thing about it, that I liked it, I did enjoy it. It was a relief after Finnegan's Wake to go from Finnegan's Wake. It sings a lot, doesn't it?

I had a go at it, I quite enjoyed it. I'm not a huge aficionado. Did you read it with the assistance of ZLSD? I wish I had. Finnegan's Wake is kind of like literary LSD. Yeah, I was going to say there's a logic to the hallucinatory quality that's implicit within Third Girl. I think I shall write a comparative study of the two books.

I think I would be rich. Yes, rich. Is there any evidence that Agatha Christie had ever struggled with it? There's no evidence. I like to think she did. Her brother was a drug addict. Really?

Ah, there you go. Anyway, while I was reading it, I was thinking, there was a specific bit quite early on where they're talking about Hercule Poirot's moustaches, his famous moustaches. And for some some reason did he have more than one he's what you call them moustaches do you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's yeah I think that is true it's well if only Nancy Mitford to correct us anyway I was thinking so the and the image came into my mind of that photograph of Marcel Proust reclining. And I got stuck in my head that if you substitute the name Marcel Proust for Hercule Poirot,

first of all, you get the brilliant image of Proust going around solving crimes via aesthetics, which I thought would be great. But also, I got to this passage. I'm just going to read this out. This is unbelievable. Listen to this. This is the start of Chapter 15 of Third Girl. And I'm changing the name here to read this out. This is unbelievable. Listen to this. This is the start of chapter 15 of Third Girl,

and I'm changing the name here to Marcel Proust. At Marcel Proust's elbow was a tisane prepared for him by Georges. He sipped at it and thought. He thought in a certain way peculiar to himself. It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course, they would be reassembled together as to make a clear and coherent picture. That's the Proustian method right there, as defined by Ms Christie.

So I did enjoy it very much, yeah. Before we move on, Laura, what would be your one adaptation of Christie that one should watch? What would it be? That's interesting. Well, I mean, most people raved about that and then there were none because I do think, Andy, I am going to say here because there is this idea

that she is, you know, stuck in perpetual 1932 with vicar and crumpets and all that kind of thing. And I do think she covered her century more broad-mindedly than she's sometimes given credit for. And I do think,

I take your point about the 1960s. Of course, she was in her late 70s when she wrote that book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think there is a kind of feel for... I thought it was quite sassy, some of the darkness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, she's game. That painter, he's got that sort of Simon Dee campness about him.

He very much has. He's a peacock. He describes the peacock with lavish hair. Yeah. I used to work for one of those. Another story. I had recommended to me the novel that she wrote after Third Girl, which is called Endless Night. No, that's brilliant, but not well adapted in answer to your question.

But, I mean, I didn't really like any of them very much. I didn't really like the David Susha. Death on the Nile. Which one? Which one? Rita Ustinov. Yeah, Rita Ustinov and a kind of, it's a bit of a gang show, isn't it? One Every Christmas.

Yeah. No? I think the problem with Agatha Christie is almost certainly, it seems to me, the adaptations. They're the ones that get dated. I was quite struck picking up Third Girl and kind of enjoying it. I mean, I know it's a pathetic thing to say, but she's a really good storyteller.

Is she a master? Two billion copies of the front page. Is she a master storyteller? I think she probably is. Yeah. I think the adaptations, they either go for that sort of art deco, everything, you know. Period piece kind of.

Yes, that's it. Or else they'd go down the E and then there were none now Agatha Christie didn't know that people had sex so we'd better put in as much as possible which is it's just insanely OTT although people seem to like it I think you and I are the only

people who didn't you me and Danny Baker are the only people who didn't like it good man I once made a terrible error about Agatha Christie. I said she played tennis in the nude, and it turned out that was Enid Blyton. That's an easy mistake to make. Not so...

John! Which brings me effortlessly. And what have you been reading? Not, sadly, about as far away from Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton as it's possible to get. I've been reading a book by Roberto Saviano, the Italian writer, called Zero, Zero, Zero, which is a very, very strange, odd, powerful book about the cocaine trade. To give you a flavour, the line on the cover is,

when you look at cocaine, you see powder. When you look through cocaine, you see the world, which you think is, well, quite a big claim, but nowhere near as big as the claims that Saviano makes. Now, you should know that Saviano wrote a very famous book called Gamora and this so enraged the Italian mafia that he lives under permanent house arrest and can't go anywhere without an armed guard.

So he is a brave guy in lots of ways. Can we call him the Salman Rushdie of cocaine? Yes, you could say he was the salman rushdie organized organized crime like salman rushdie he likes hanging around with bono oh yeah uh he's a he's become he's got a million twitter followers now he's a big i mean so there are certain issues with this book one of the major issues with the book is that it's written in a kind of sort of rhapsodic, not quite sure whether it's sort of works or not style. There are some brilliant, brilliant passages in it. But you begin to notice that there's not a lot of what you would call sourcing. There isn't a lot of,

and it's incredibly confusing. I mean, the cocaine trade is disgusting and terrible. And he's angry, very angry about it. And the point of the book the book i guess is on one side is to say look we all think this happens in mexico but in fact we're all complicit you know cocaine is rife the uk is where all the money is laundered it's a one of the huge export markets for cocaine but at the other side it's a kind of a terrible sort of top trumps of cruelty. I mean, the book is full of the most awful and disgusting stories of excessive cruelty. But there is a kind of weird thing that happens is you realise that you kind of lose the names.

It's just one strange L this and L that and L loco and L chapo. And he makes the most extraordinary claims, you know, sort of saying that the meeting of the Mexican cartels was the origin of the modern world. At some point, he also says that there's no market in the world that brings in more revenue than the cocaine market. And you feel like saying, mobile phones over a trillion, over a trillion dollars. So he's making a kind of slightly sort of hysterical case.

The other thing is, which has come out, a lot of it is kind of quite lazily taken from wikipedia from other journalists none of it is is properly sourced knowing what it's like to get green ink letters if you make one qi fat long actually i'm slightly amazed that penguin press have gone with it but they have it's been a it's been a huge hit it's powerful i mean it's i don't think the guy's a bad guy but it's And he's kind of compared himself to Capote, sort of saying, well, you know, I'm obviously literary. I'm obviously doing something... Anyway, I'm not going to be buying this for everybody for next Christmas,

but it certainly was a really interesting kind of corrective to Turkey. In fact, my case, goose, and all the other Christmas festivities. Dickens, he ain't. You see, my problem with this book is books about cocaine fall into the category for me. I know what's coming. They're just bloat books. I don't care how good it is or bad it is.

I'm just never going to read it. I found a review of this book online. It was a five-star review, and it said, this book is essential for anyone with even the slightest interest in the world at large so i thought well that's good that lets me off the hook biographies of joe strummer and books about football you know i saw goodfellas 25 years ago too but i got over it you know just i can't i can't i just i i agree with you there's a lot of terrible bloke stuff out there.

I think it's, I think Samyana's a more, just because of the strangeness of his life. And I think Gamora, which I've also read, it was an interesting book, although that seems to, it was afflicted by the same problems. But, yeah, I'm not sure about this kind of hybrid nonfiction. And I'm thinking, Laura, when you're writing a biography of somebody,

you have to make sure that your, you know, your sources are... I, as a reader, don't want to be told, oh, I made quite a lot of it up. Do you like the reimagined dialogue that you find in lots of non-fiction books these days? You know, where they imagine that they were there in the scene and they'll report dialogue of something that... That's shocking, isn't it?

Yeah, I find it hard to accept, I suppose. It's like Gene Plady. I find it hard to accept, I suppose. It's like Jean Plady. Oh, my God. Jean Plady Gak. Roberto Saviano, you are the Jean Plady of powder. Anyway, well, I think probably that's enough on what we've been reading.

I think we should move hurriedly on to the core, the meat of the podcast, which is Nancy Mitford's novel, The Blessing. Andy, will you do the blurbing, please? The now traditional backlisted exercise, Laura, of regardless of the quality of the book, in this case, Nancy Mitford's The Blessing, we always like to, rather than pre-see the plot on our own terms, we like to read the blurb out the back. Because what we've discovered is blurb is a thing that wasn't ever meant to be read out loud.

But we like to... Can I tell you a great C. Day Lewis thing about it? He said the sonnet, the detective story and the blurb are all basically the most perfect crystallisation of literary form. Did he? Yeah. What were the blurbs like on his books? Quite short.

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Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. This is the blurb on the latest Penguin edition of Nancy Mitford's The Blessing. Here we go. It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace, along with her young son Siggy, is finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bed-hopping.

When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Siggy steps in. Mark of ellipsis. The Bless blessing is a hilarious tale of love, fidelity and the English abroad, tailored as brilliantly as one of

Dior's new look suits. Caw! I think that's cruel. As a man who has to write blurbs every day, I feel that's unfair for the poor person that had to write that. I've struggled with blurbs. Everyone's struggled write blurbs. I feel that's unfair for the poor person that had to write that. I've struggled with blurbs.

Everyone's struggled with blurbs around this time. I think the thing about blurbs is that very few people actually read them in depth. The trick to them is to create something that wears your eye glosses over quite quickly. You see certain key signifiers that you think you might enjoy. So it is a little bit unfair Matthew but try not to try not to worry I'll try not they're pitching it as sort of chicklet aren't they which is jolly interesting because she is in a way she has got that slight

chicklet aspect to her Nancy she does sort of chat onto the page, you know, rather than apparently write a sentence. It does. One of her friends said her books read like an enchantingly clever woman telling a story down the telephone. And that is, but it's with her, it's a knack because there's, there is actually quite a lot more going on, but she's got this particularly by her mature style. This is her seventh novel.

She wrote four sort of more immature novels. Then she wrote The Pursuit of Love, which I think is her best. Then she wrote Love in a Cold Climate. Then she wrote this one. And she's in her 40s by this time. And her voice by this time has got this wonderful ease you feel so comfortable with can i just interrupt just a bit of context around that's quite interesting i think that it's worth it's significant that the blessing is the third novel that she writes in a six-year period yeah

and that the first of those three novels the pursuit of, was a huge bestseller when it was first published immediately. It was sensationally successful. Two years later, Love in a Cold Climate, similarly successful. So this is that difficult third novel in six years. As I say, she'd written these for... She wrote her first book when she was about 25 or something, Highland Fling, and they were sort of 1920s, you know, sub-Evelyn Waugh. But good, you know, she had...

Pigeon Pie, was that that? Pigeon Pie, yeah, is a phony war novel. And she's like, what was your phrase about Agatha Christie? A master storyteller. Yeah, master storyteller. She's got the gift of readability. She had it from the, you know, she just has. So The Pursuit of Love, which is more or less autobiographical, it's the story of her family.

In 1945, the family had all fallen apart by that time, but she recreated them as fiction and it was incredibly successful. Same as Bride Said Revisited, they came out more or less at the same time and they're conjuring a world that was falling apart by that time, but the people still responded. Love in a Cold Climate, again, set in the world of English country houses, all that kind. And then she herself had moved to Paris after the war and stayed there until her death in 1973. And she started writing about France,

and I think people just felt that was less innate. You know, she wasn't innately producing something that was her own, from her core, if you like. It was a world that she'd kind of fallen in love with later on. And I think Philip Hensher said her relationship with France is intricate, but not deep, which I think is a very good way of putting it. And there is this slight sense in The Blessing of, oh, I'm in France and it's all so lovely. Oh, my God, I'm slightly hysterical.

But, you know, so Grace is the English woman who falls in love with the French man and everything French, just as Nancy did. She had her French lover. Yeah, I was going to say, because Pilevsky was her... Yeah, Gaston Pilevsky, who was General de Gaulle's right-hand man in London during the war, and Nancy started an affair with him. And he looked nothing like the guy in The Blessing.

He was kind of textbook, sort of... Yeah. Dashing. Dashing, sort of yeah yeah kind of dashing dashing sort of tall yeah soldier and you say they fall in love but that's i mean it happens really quickly doesn't it yeah kind of almost casual that that's a wonderful thing about nancy mitford as a writer i mean i'm really interested in talking about nancy mitford as a writer one of the things that she does brilliantly and very almost idiosyncratically does brilliantly and very almost idiosyncratically is plot happens in a line or two yeah you know there are long hilarious passages of dialogue and yet the birth or death of somebody or the

information that's given to the reader that grace is pregnant before she miscarries yeah that happens in in a line this happened when i read i read um love in a cold climate quite recently within the last few months and i had the same thing where i would suddenly stop and reread a short sentence in which something really significant seemed to have happened i love that but yet you don't feel the books are under plotted you feel they are constructed absolutely to a correct set of rules that she sticks to. What I loved about it, I mean, I went in, you know, slightly my class warrior head on and said,

I've got another book of bloody pointless aristocrats. But actually, she writes so well. You've got class warrior head? I do. You've never seen mine. It may come out later. It really looks like the bust of Marx. Exactly. But the brilliant thing is that she does just hook you.

What I loved about it was the sense of, you know, these are very wealthy people. Grace comes from a wealthy family. Charles Edouard from France is, you know these these are very wealthy people she's grace comes from a wealthy family charles edward from uh from france is you know very very very kind of uh french sort of minor aristocracy and you feel that they're living they're living in this sort of charmed world but very early on you begin to get the sense of things not being quite right of i mean she manages this creeping sense of sort of i mean you know without giving away, as they say, spoilers, the climactic scene where, you know, she decides she has to leave her husband. She prepares you brilliantly for it.

And like you say, the ability to do things with utter economy. I mean, I love the line. You know, she's talking about the English that somebody took right. Talking one of the French characters. They're all half mad. A country of enormous fair mad atheists. It's kind of

brilliant. Enormous mad fair atheists. So I think that like all good fiction, I mean, I think the plot is managed brilliantly and the blessing, we should say, of the title is the child, the single child, Siggy, who is one of the most monstrous and brilliant child creations

in all literature, I think. I think Siggy as a character was probably my favourite character in the book. Really? Yeah, as a brilliantly precocious child. Precocious, unique little monster that I hadn't encountered in literature before. I think it's terrific. You see, who I love is the old lady, Madame, what's her name? Rochelle Dizimli, who's 80.

Gusts of sexuality. Yes, exactly. She's so sexy. And she goes to that English dinner party and they all want to show off their French because she never stops speaking English. And praising everything English, she says, oh, the joy

to wander in the Woolworth. In the Woolworth and the DH heavens. You see this is that I love these things about Nancy that the people have they're all about sort of 40 and she's 80 and there's this sense that when you get older you that's when life starts getting really good and you start having a wonderful time you don't have to give up any pleasure just because you're got practically two feet in the grave and young people are regarded as right the it's the best line in the whole of nancy mitford for me because there's this frightful sort of joke american who says to um dexter dexter sister madame roche what do you do for your young people here how do they amuse themselves and she says they're young surely that's enough why do they need to amuse themselves and i think of that all the time because it's so

sort of that's pure n. It seems like nothing. But there's actually rather a lot to it. The book is, as you say, John, there's a kind of astringency to the book. Yeah. And it sometimes amazes me that women like Nancy so much because she really gives women quite a tough time, you know. If your husband is playing around, but nevertheless, in every other way he's attractive and desirable, you should really turn a blind eye.

That is her message. Also, I think the brilliant thing about her as a writer in these books, if we're talking about the three or maybe four, if we include the one that follows this one, Don't Tell Alfred, is I find her wonderfully democratically merciless. She's very happy to find the feet of clay in whichever character she's talking about even her heroes and heroines and she either she's very good at suggesting to you the reader whether she likes them or she dislikes them so even if she's talking about

their flaws if she likes them she'll let you know and And if she dislikes them. Sure. And when it's the American, she lets you know with a fairly heavy. She's not overly subtle about some things. Well, this is me wearing my biographer's hat. And I'm sorry if I'm going into the territory of inventing conversations here. I think there's an element. Because her own lover, Pilevsky, was compulsively unfaithful. And she had to live with it. You do get a slight feeling in the blessing of her trying to explain her own situation to herself and sort of saying, you know,

if a man is everything to you, but nevertheless, he has this recreational desire to sleep with other women. And if he's attractive, they're going to find him attractive too. Why can't you live with it? That was her own situation. And everyone just says to Grace, it's your duty to stay with him. Nobody even sympathizes with Grace that she's being, that her husband is, as we would see a modern woman, making a complete fool of her. It's a stern view of, it's a very romanticized book. In another way, it's a stern view of it's a very romanticized book in another way it's a very very realistic book how do you live with love how do you make it work how do you make a marriage work i mean incredibly i thought incredibly modern in that way i really thought that um and i mean there's some fantastic i mean i don't think she is a satirist no i don't know

but the portrait which i i think you you you in your wonderful biography say that the the captain who is this avant-garde theater director sort of based on uh cyril connelly has all these all these women kind of big-boned women with bare feet and i mean they're bohemians blue feet, yeah. They're proto beatniks. They're proto beatniks. And their kind of, you know, their sort of thing is just to go off, if they feel they're being badly treated by a man, they go off and have an adventure. But they come out of the book a lot less well than Grace.

I mean, you kind of end up really admiring Grace. And if I'm right, Grace and Charles-Edouard reappear in the next novel. Yeah, they do, yeah. Kind of happier and more... I'd like to ask, Laura, we talk about this book as being autobiographical and related to things in Nancy Mitford's life, but if we didn't know anything about Nancy Mitford, what would we think this novel was about?

I actually think of the novels I've read, it's my favourite. That's interesting. Because it seems to me to be about the thing you were just talking about. The idea that it's a challenge to an English way of looking at the world. Mm-hm. You know, that you were saying that Grace is never sympathised with. No. And actually that seems to me to be one of the fascinating things about the book,

a constant challenging of your assumptions about what constitutes proper behaviour in a given situation. Yes, I mean, but you say it's modern, John. To me it's... Maybe not, yeah. I think you'd be assassinated if you wrote a book like this now i mean i might i might be wrong but i she'd absolutely be assassinated she really is why because it's kind of like because it says it's put up with your husband's infidelities and if you you know well there's that great scene which is the one of another i don't

know how much we can give away but we could she comes back and she confesses to her father, Sir Conrad Allium, who... He's an old bee, isn't he? He's great, though. She could basically say, I've left my husband because he's been unfaithful. He said, well, steady on, darling. I mean, it seems like you're being a little harsh on him. He seems perfectly reasonable.

Yeah. There's that really... Towards the end of the book, too, where the woman whose name I can't remember who is the marvellous septuagenarian says I presume you were still you were still basically

you were still sleeping together so if you were still sleeping and he was sleeping with other people what's the problem? Are you right? That is the kind of message of the book The women he's sleeping with are married I mean it's is the kind of message of the book. Oh, the women he's sleeping with are married. I mean, it's not a kind of, you know, men can sleep with people and women have to sleep.

I mean, if Grace had wanted to have an affair, that would be okay. Yeah. You know, it's just a sort of meditation on how you sort of uncompromise in a way. I do love this. Just a great little thing. Madame Rocher, who is looking through her lorgn way. I do love this. Just a great little thing. Madame Rocher, who is looking through her lorgnette here, I love this. She's talking about modern youth.

I might do a really bad French accent, maybe I shouldn't, but I'm glad it's not me growing up now. What a world for them. Atom bombs and no brothels. What will parents do about that? After all, you can't very well ask your own friends, can you? I suppose they'll all end up as pederasts. I mean, you probably wouldn't get away with that easily in a modern novel.

Would this novel have been considered shocking in 1951 in any way? In a way? I mean, you're saying it would be assassinated now. No, I don't think. I mean, you know, that dinner party talk, I know there's a bit when Charles Edouard says, oh, it's tough for us men now, isn't it? We have to deal with abortions and this and that. And you sort of think that's their chit-chat. I don't think people were shocked.

No, I don't think they were. And I know, well, Love in a Cold Climate, which is all about, there's an awful lot of homosexuality in it. And Harold Acton, who was Nancy's first biographer, said the non-judgmental way in which she portrayed the gays in Love and Cold Climate helped change attitudes. They didn't like it in America, but she said, I shall never write about the other kind of love

because this kind sells much better. But she doesn't judge ever i don't think she um she's not a satirist i agree with you john there is a sort of benign the style is so benign and smiling she's she's not as good a writer as muriel spark in my but there's that assurance in the voice that that is similar and that kind of there's a line in the voice that is similar. And that kind of, there's a line in Muriel Spark when she finds that her boyfriend's having an affair and her remark upon it is, I dearly love a turn of events. So she's not upset.

She's just, and that's quite Mitford, I think. They sort of have an attitude to life that is very absorbing to the reader, very reassuring to the reader, even though it is astringent. And I just think the full blown Mitford voice is really at the heart of what makes this novel good. I read it at the same time as I was reading the letters that Nancy wrote to Hayward Hill. So Hayward Hill is a bookshop, the wonderful bookshop, still going in Mayfair on Curzon Street. It's a tenuous link coming up. It's relatively tenuous.

I think we could describe it as such. So I read it at the same time. So Nancy worked in Hayward Hill during the war. I think she managed it during the war. And so she wrote these wonderful letters, this wonderful collection, in fact, that the bookshop, I think, brought out, between the two of them, that goes over the whole course of their life really and it's interesting that readability

is there in the letters it's there you know from the first page you're straight in there and you're already on page 10 and they have that same sense of gentle teasing that you get in the book that's really it's without kind of rancor or bitterness and it's full kind of rancor or bitterness

um and it's full of wonderful there's a what my favorite bit in it is as a which is in fact hayward hill talking but it could be nancy where they're describing a um a dinner party that um hayward hill has and the guests get quite drunk um because the food doesn't arrive till late and his wife falls over and hurts her leg and she says oh god i can't bear to look at the wound what does it look like what does it look like and one of the guests who's rather drunk says well it rather reminds me of the of a maltese goat well we're on animals and genitalia i mean the funny the funniest story which is right at the beginning of your book is on nancy mitford's tomb, there's a mole. And there's a letter from an aunt, isn't there, about the little,

I think I'm allowed to say this because it's just little gold f***ing on her tomb. She's dropping seaballs like mad now. But the point is, there is a Gloucestershire, she says, and the aunt says it's an old Gloucestershire term for the female pudenda. But it's an old Gloucestershire term for the female pudender. But it's not. The Gloucestershire term, because I live nearby, is wunt, I think. Oh, really?

Yeah, wunt. Wow. So not. Back on safer ground. So a tiny bit of trivia for the end of this tenuous link. So I asked the wonderful Nicky Dunn at Hayward Hill, what order do they sell you know what's the best-selling list of nancy's novel what's top what's bottom and i wanted to ask the

three of you firstly which do you think was the best-selling novel today and where do you think the blessing comes in the top five so i'm going to start with you laura what do you think's the best-selling nancy mitford novel today oh god loving God. Love in a Cold Climate. John? Well, I'd also go for that one. Andy? I'm going to say Wigs on the Green. It's actually Pursuit of Love. Oh! Love in a Cold Climate's number two,

The Blessing's number three, and Wigs on the Green's number five. Oh! That's pretty interesting. So four is Don't Tell Alfred, is it? Yes, it is. Four is Don't Tell Alfred. In a way, Nancy's reputation surely was completely kind of occluded

as a novelist by that one book that she wrote about you and non-you. I mean, if you were saying Nancy Mitford to most people, and it still goes on today, Nikki Haslam is always doing the lists of things that are vulgar, which Christmas trees are vulgar. I hadn't appreciated that. It was a huge cultural moment, wasn't it? It was a cultural moment.

This is the thing that happens with culture. I'm sorry, I don't know this. What was the cultural moment? Well, you and non-you, I actually have no idea what they stand for. Upper class. Upper class. But Nancy Mitford conceived and wrote the you and non-you classifications very tongue-in-cheek and affectionately.

And as in some way with cultural moments, the tongue-in-cheek yeah and affectionately and as in the way with cultural moments the tongue-in-cheek element rather fell away and people wrote to her saying you know what is good form is it good like you shouldn't say for instance what's the you and not right you so okay if you might say writing paper but it i can't remember which is which is no no paper you can't remember which is which. Yeah, no paper you can't say. So pudding is you, but dessert is non-you. And it became a parlor game. And, of course, what people get very anxious about, whether they're getting the terms right. And, of course, as Andy says, it was sort of intended to be kind of funny.

I mean, she didn't like people saying cheers was very non-you. She was a snob in some ways. She said Graham Greene's novels were full of pubs. She called him... She had a funny nickname for him, wasn't she? Like Grim Green or something. Really? I didn't know that. In the letters. It started because there is this thing in The Pursuit of Love

where the father, who is her own father, sort of says, oh, you mustn't talk about notepaper or something. And some professor picked up on this and said, can I quote you, Nancy, in my learned paper about philological whatever? And then she said Stephen Spender, who was then at encounter encouraged her to write this it wasn't even her idea in the first place but it was the 50s by then and people were a bit more sort of i don't know combative about the whole thing but at the same time i know the times had an advert for

a you skiing party wow so It became a thing, yeah. Because she'd escaped to Paris by then, which was probably wise, because she knew her day was over in that sense, and she could sort of plunder France and sell France to the English, which they always quite liked. Is that one of the reasons why this is her penultimate novel? So she writes, as we were saying earlier, she writes three novels in six years and then there's there's no further novels for another 10

years yeah she moved on to historical biography with no invented dialogue are they good i haven't read any of them i think the pompadour one is brilliant yeah they were tremendously successful weren't they yeah in their day, weren't they? Yeah, huge. And when she was dying, she wrote a biography of Frederick the Great. I mean, she was an admirable woman, really. Completely self-taught, like her sister Diana, you know, Moseley. They were terribly intelligent. They'd read everything.

They were really very brainy women. I always sort of like to think of them as the Kardashians of the mid-20th century. Sort of covered blue stocking Kardashians. This is the thing I really want to talk about. I'm really fascinated by this. I'm fascinated by what it says about the British particularly, that in the last ten years, it seems to me,

there's a real kind of Mitfords as the Spice Girls thing that's happened and with Nancy as kind of righty Mitford. Yeah, yeah. And swastika Mitford. Yeah, and swastika Mitford. Do you think that has enhanced... Chicken-keeping Mitford. Has that enhanced or diminished Nancy's reputation as a writer?

That's really interesting. As someone who's written a book about... Take Six Girls, your latest book, is about all of them. Well, from that... I mean, I was asked to do it. I'm not... It sounds like I've got pictures of them, or like a shrine to them at home or something.

My memory is, say 30 years ago, my memory is that Nancy Mitford, thought of as an autonomous writer, now Nancy Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters. And in light of what we've been talking about with The Blessing, does that build her reputation? Is this book slightly harmed by the fact that we think of it as part of this soap opera? I don't know.

Yeah, Mitford industry. Yeah, it is an industry. Living where you do, John, you must be those practically sort of dolls of them in the shops, I should think. Yeah, I mean, it's true. There's a lot of Mitford. Mitford tourism is big in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire.

Is she your favourite? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. Mitford tourism is big in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire. Is she your favourite? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, her sisters all hated her, I think. But she is the constructor of the Mitford myth. I mean, without her, what would you, you'd have someone who was obsessed with Hitler, someone who married Mosley, for God's sake. Someone who was... Chickens. Great chicken river. There's always the rogue was a... Chickens. Great chicken river. There's always the rogue one, isn't there?

The chicken river. And someone who married a communist and supported Stalin. So Nancy... Crazy girls. When she wrote The Pursuit of Love and sort of reimagined them through the prism of her light-filled imagination, I would say, whereas there's a darkness about some of them, no mistake. I think she made that mythology, and it's from her that we get this, what you're talking about now,

the sextet, you know. Yes, that's very interesting. And we think it's a shame. I think we think it's a shame because I really, really enjoyed... I mean, I will read more of Nancy Mitford, and I'm quite surprised by that, because I sort of... I mean, you know, I was perfectly prepared to say, Mitford, it's all a bit dated, it's all over, you know.

But actually, I found this book really... I thought about it, I mean, it really drew me in. And I think she just writes... I mean, you know, she's also bloody... There's some amazingly funny bits. The nanny character. Also the discipline of it, you know, she's also bloody... There's some amazingly funny bits. The nanny character. Also the discipline of it, you know? Yeah, yeah.

If it were just soap opera or an insight into the lives of the rich and privileged, well, all right. They are rich, though, aren't they? It really shocked me when I read it again. They've all got about five houses. I know, it's really... It's quite depressing when you... The bits in Paris with these... You go in this... What's such a large garden to have in the middle of Paris?

I didn't know there were any gardens in the middle of Paris. But I love Nanny because the whole thing is obviously, she was a Francophile and the whole, one of the lovely things is taking an English nanny and putting them in the middle of Paris. But of course, she hates everything about France and the food and everything. But the brilliant thing is she comes back

and there's a wonderful passage here, which I'll read. She's over the clanking cups of tea with her cronies, you know, the other nannies sitting. She said, say what you choose. France is a wonderful country. Oh, it's wonderful. Take the shops, dear. They groan with food, just like pre-war.

I only wish you could see the meat. Great carcasses for anybody to buy. The offal brimming over onto the pavement. Animals like elephants. They could have suet every day if they knew how to make a nice suet pudding. But there's one drawback. Nobody there can cook. It's just great.

I mean, that... And I think the thing is, she's a great social observer, isn't she? She is. I mean, she is just... She is so funny. She's just... I mean, isn't she? She is. I mean, she is so funny. I mean, you were talking about her letters. Her letters to Evelyn Waugh are sort of gut-wrenchingly funny, some of them.

It's when she found her own voice, and she's completely relaxed writing to Evelyn Waugh, who was about the only man in her acquaintance who didn't snipe at her talent, actually. Cyril Connolly was absolutely furious with the portrait of her. He said something like, yeah, she carries on, she nags away at it or something like that. Very snide about her. But when I wrote that book, the biography of her, because she'd done a

play in the 50s, a sort of boulevard comedy, which unbelievably was directed by Peter Brook. What's it? It's bizarre. That's a marvellous fact. Before he did his white box and everything. Yeah, yeah? It's bizarre. That's a marvellous fact. Before he did his white box and everything. Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. That's amazing.

It would be good if they put it in the white box. That is a very cool thing. So I wrote to him and I said, do you remember her at all? And he wrote back this lovely little letter and he said, what I remember about Nancy was that she was light, but not in the English sense, in the French sense, lightness as an absolute value, i.e. not the opposite of serious,

but lightness having a value of its own. And I thought about that a lot. That's sort of exactly what the flavour of the book is. That's kind of brilliant, actually. That's rather wonderful, yeah. The book, interestingly, was dedicated to Evelyn Waugh. I just read this great little bit from Laura's book in 1951 saying reviewers are lazy brutes. It wasn't very well reviewed 1951, saying, reviewers are lazy brutes. It wasn't very well reviewed.

Reviewers are lazy brutes. They want to say, here is another Mitford, sparkling and irresponsible in her own inimitable way. They can't bear to see a writer grow up. They have no influence at all. Everyone I know delights in the blessing, and I'm constantly buoyed up with pride at the dedication, which is a very generous thing from one writer to another.

And you can kind of see that War would have loved this book. constantly buoyed up with pride at the dedication, which is a very generous thing from one writer to another. And you can kind of see that War would have loved this book. Yeah, he was completely not spiteful in that way to her. Because, I mean, some of her sentences are terribly lazy. She'll write sort of, they had tea and all was merry or something like that. But it's quite, you know how... It always reminds me of the great Kingsley Amis line about Martin Amis's prose. He needs to have more sentences like, they finished their drinks and left.

But that is so true, isn't it? Because every sentence now is so goddamn rightly, you know. It's like being hit over the head with a thesaurus. And she is that casualness. And he did criticise her for being amateurish war. And then I think he sort of realised that her defects and her qualities were as one and just went along with liking it. Right, you're tenuously.

Right, John, here it comes. LAUGHTER That was seamless. That was absolutely seamless. Can we run into that again? I'm sorry, I haven't time. Well, I was just going to go back to Hayward Hill again for very quickly and thinking about Mayfair.

So Hayward Hill's in Mayfair. And I've always been interested in Mayfair because it's this kind of weird place in that it was also a kind of centre of 60s culture. Yeah. And bizarrely, so Hayward Hill's at 10 Curzon Street, and number 9 Curzon Street is the flat owned by

Harry Nilsson. Do you know what happened in that flat by Harry Nilsson, Andy? I am sorry to report that it was the scene of the passing of Cass Elliot. And? Next at Hayward Hill. I'm not sure if it's the same side of the street or not.

The next number. Keith Moon. Keith Moon. No. And it's also like Mayfair was the place that the Beatles moved to when they first moved to London. That's right. The only place they lived together was in Mayfair.

So I was thinking about that and I wondered, well, are there any connections between Nancy Mitford and the Beatles? So I'm going to ask you all. There were two I found, well, are there any connections between Nancy Mitford and the Beatles? So I'm going to ask you all. There are two I've found, two connections. And I actually think that Andy should get one of them. If he doesn't get one of them, he's going to be... I'm not really going to have to hand him my badge because I didn't spot the Keith Moon one. OK, so can anyone think of a connection between the two?

I'm looking at my connections folder and I'm seeing a blank space, I'm afraid. Andy, I'm going to give you a hint because you might get it. Think of Abbey Road. Think of the tracks on Abbey Road and the books that Nancy... Sun King. Sun King. Yes, the Beatles had a song called Sun King and Nancy Mitford wrote a book called Sun King.

So Hunter Davis says that... John Lennon was reading it? He was reading it or read a review of it, at least that's where it came from. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, that's quite cool. And the second link, we're going to hear it, and it's Jessica Mitford, and it sounds something like this.

Joan was critical Oh! Oh! Oh! All alone at night with a test tube How can we make one of the Beatles the worst song? Even a little bit worse. Or better. Or better. Or better.

It sounds more like musical. The chorus is the best, actually, which is coming up in a second. Why? How? Under what circumstances did this happen? Shush, shush, shush. We've got to hear the chorus. She's getting ready to go.

Bang, bang, my tenuous one. Oh, wow. Wow, that's wonderful. Oh, come on. Why? Seriously? So it's from 1995, extraordinarily. Is it from the Exotic Beatles or something like that? No, she started doing a kind of cabaret act.

Why is it that? I think she did it at a party once and then was encouraged and did little cabaret acts in various nightclubs around San Francisco. And this, there were two tracks that were actually released as a single. I was going to say, that's the single? Decker and the Decker Friends. The name of the band. Well, the speechless as usual.

The speechless as usual. That was wonderful. Well, thank you so much, everyone. Yeah, great. And thank you in particular, Laura, for coming and opening, maybe dusting off the reputation of Nancy Mitford, and particularly the blessing, which I think we all feel is hugely still worth reading.

That's so nice that you liked it, really. Oh, really. Oh, if I had to choose one book that was the opposite of books about blokes and cocaine, it would be The Blessing. I absolutely loved it. I loved it. Thank you so much for suggesting we read it. It was great. Well, it's been lovely.

I think that's everything. I should probably say, if you want to participate and suggest things that we might be discussing in future podcasts, please go to our Twitter account, which is at BacklistedPod, or our Facebook account. But thank you for listening. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted,

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