Darling: A razor-sharp, gloriously funny retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love

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This is perhaps because Knight, free from the innate pressures of the roman à clef, has enough distance for clarity.

Darling is the story of her growing up: the people she meets; the men she falls in love with; and her friendship, enduring and eternal, with Frances. How on earth do you transpose a novel so distinctive, and whose plot hinges on the fraught political backdrop of early 20th-century Europe, to today’s world?

Tony Kroesig is the son of a UKIP-supporting Lord Bamford type, and Christian Talbot is a self-obsessed OE minor novelist with a fine line in poverty tourism. The neighborhood looks different too, but she’s still the same woman and it’s still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide. After writing an article in The Sunday Times about her daughter's special needs - her youngest child has DiGeorge syndrome. Four of the six Mitford sisters were then still living, Pamela in the Cotswolds, Diana in Paris with her second. Other authors have come along in my reading journey that have been right up my street - Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are my all time go-to for comfort reading and never fail to raise a wry smile.

Husband number one, Tony Kroesig, has been perfectly refashioned as the son of a prominent right-winger.Her updates are so so clever - Uncle Matthew is a cantankerous retired rock star living in rural Norfolk with bad wifi and little phone signal, and Auntie Sadie is posh Anglo-Indian boho, while Lord Merlin is now a sort of combination of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano (the doves dyed pastel colours totally fit! The last few years have seen the 2021 BBC adaptation of Mitford’s 1945 novel The Pursuit of Love, starring Lily James, and the “Mitford Murders” series by Jessica Fellowes. Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition.

I understand that using blank-space-Fran as narrator is a way of making the reader feel involved, but there should have been some serious conversations between the author and their editor at a fairly early stage about the wisdom of having much of the book narrated in great detail by someone who wasn't there and couldn't have known everything they describe, even if the characters who were there had told them. Like most clever people, I’m not over-fussed about clothing; there have been numerous studies showing that successful types – unless they’re in entertainment, showbiz or fashion itself, obvs – tend to wear the same thing every day. The book is narrated by Frances, a cousin of the Radlett siblings, who has been sent to live with her Aunt Sadie and Uncle Matthew by her flaky mother. In a place she had determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her, and us, that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps it’s nothing more than a little luck.Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry. Linda’s life is charted from early adolescence, and takes in her loves and losses, successes and failures. updated; Uncle Matthew, for instance, is a retired pop star; Davey an interior designer; Merlin a fashion designer.

I'm glad that I read the original text that this retelling is taken from so that I had that knowledge of the storyline and could appreciate the masterful way that India Knight has revamped the story but kept the heart of the characters the same.Just the thing for a rainy day or a long drive to lift the spirits and make all right with the world. She uses the device of no phone signal, and a ban on electronics (“analogue children in a digital age”) to allow the Radletts to be as old-fashioned and wild as Mitford’s original clan. The book then follows all of the family – but primarily Linda on her pursuit of love, taking in London and Paris as well as Norfolk. The latest, much-anticipated addition to the Mitford shelves is journalist India Knight’s Darling, a modern re-telling of The Pursuit of Love. It’s all an absolute hoot and Knight seems to be especially enjoying herself when it comes to Uncle Matthew, a man “of extreme and simple emotions” who weeps at the sight of particularly tragic old dogs and delights in trolling people on Instagram (“CLOSE YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU SMILE”).