Nancy Mitford

It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are 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 bedhopping. 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 Sigi steps in . . .

Fanny is married to absent-minded Oxford don Alfred and content with her role as a plain, tweedy housewife. But overnight her life changes when Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris. In the blink of an eye, Fanny's mixing with royalty, Rothschilds and Dior-clad wives, throwing cocktail parties and having every indiscreet remark printed in tomorrow's papers.But with the love lives of her new friends to organize, an aristocratic squatter who won't budge and the antics of her maverick sons to thwart, Fanny's far too busy to worry about the diplomatic crisis looming on the horizon. . .

Nancy Mitford's first novel, a set of completely incompatible and hilariously eccentric characters collide in a Scottish castle, where bright young things play pranks on their stodgy elders until the frothy plot climaxes in ghost sightings and a dramatic fire. Inspired in part by Mitford's youthful infatuation with a Scottish aristocrat, her story follows young Jane Dacre to a shooting party at Dulloch Castle, where she tramps around a damp and chilly moor on a hunting expedition with formidable Lady Prague, xenophobic General Murgatroyd, one-eyed Admiral Wenceslaus, and an assortment of other ancient and gouty peers of the realm, while falling in love with Albert, a surrealist painter with a mischievous sense of humour.

Nancy Mitford's letters to her friends show acute observation, fantasy and wit.

Ah, the dresses! But oh, the monotony of the Season, with its endless run of glittering balls. Even fabulously fashionable Polly Hampton - with her startling good looks and excellent social connections - is beginning to wilt under the glare.Groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, fearsome Lady Montdore, Polly instead scandalises society by declaring her love for her uncle 'Boy' Dougdale, the Lecherous Lecturer, and promptly eloping to France. But the consequences of this union no one could quite expect . . .

The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two bestsellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate; her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress; and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life.

The Pursuit of Love
This bittersweet tale follows the fortunes of Fanny Logan and her eccentric aristocratic cousins, the Radletts, as they embark on disastrous love affairs and misconceived marriages while searching for Mr Right.

Love in a Cold Climate
A glamorous invitation to a grand party at Hampton - home of the fantastically rich Montdores and their beautiful daughter Polly - brings Fanny into the world of 1920s high society: and in and out of love when the temperature drops... Amanda Root stars in this sparkling sequel to The Pursuit of Love.

The King's Favourite
Based on Mitford's Madame de Pompadour, this three-part drama vividly evokes the colourful atmosphere of 18th Century Versailles, and Louis XV's tempestuous relationship with his adored mistress, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour.

Dearest Evelyn, Darling Nancy
Adapted from the witty correspondence of lifelong literary friends Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford, this entertaining, gossipy 'conversation in letters' stars Timothy West and Prunella Scales.

Greatest Lives - Nancy Mitford
Grace Dent loves Nancy Mitford for her wit, and for the way in which she showed women that it was possible to live your life fully and unconventionally. Matthew Parris asks what it is about Nancy that so inspires Grace, with the aid of Mitford biographer Lisa Hilton.

Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results.

Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover.But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris . . .

Louis XIV was, during his reign, the most powerful king in Europe. The centre of his world was Versailles, the glittering palace where he conducted both his government and his complex love affairs. Nancy Mitford describes in vibrant detail the daily life of this splendid court.

Eugenia Malmains is one of the richest girls in England and an ardent supporter of Captain Jack and the Union Jackshirts; Noel and Jasper are both in search of an heiress (so much easier than trying to work for the money); Poppy and Marjorie are nursing lovelorn hearts; and the beautiful bourgeois Mrs Lace is on the prowl for someone near Eugenia's fabulous country home at Chalford, and much farce ensues.