Nancy Mitford: I salute you

I'm still musing over the Nancy Mitford quote in The Delicious Miss Dahl episode  on Romance. A glorious week later.

nancy mitford

"Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening." ~ Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

How perfectly sumptuous. And bob on. Hot dang, as our american cousins might say, I love it when you hear something so simply wonderful like that.


If you like that, you'll love this.....

"Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives" ~ Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

"Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered." ~Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding

"I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away."

Nancy Mitford was one of the famous Mitford clan of sisters. Nancy was one of 6 Mitford sisters. She lived in 'sin' in Paris writing comic novels set in upper-class society seeking meaning from love and life and coming to the general conclusion of, "To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease." Recently a number of biographical books have been released exploring their infamous legacy, including Decca: The letters of Jessica Mitford. about the Fifth Mitford sister, and often thought of as the rebel of the pack. And The Mitfords: Letters between sisters what comes out is not just their privilege and luxurious upbringing but their intelligence in life, politics and feminism.

I think Sophie Dahl bringing together Nancy Mitford and Wendy Cope is a wonderful complementation, and these excerpts must tell us a bit about Sophie Dahl's personality, she's not a little-house-wife-coy-lady-in-the-kitchen as many reviews would have us believe. (p.s. Sophie's dress in The Delicious Miss Dahl, Romance?)

When Nancy Mitford said, "If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.'"

I think Wendy Cope's reply is, the poem Two cures for love


1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2 The easy way: get to know him better

More Wendy Cope? OK, how delicious, 2 poems before breakfast.

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled and shared it with Robert and Dave —
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

~ The Orange, Wendy Cope

The Delicious Miss Dahl on Romance

I'm a fair and rational person. And I cannot ignore The Delicious Miss Dahl, I.II. I think it only fair to review episode two of the Delicious Miss Dahl series to give you good foodie friends a further insight and hopefully a gentle push in the direction of iPlayer. Romance was the theme of this week's programme and that, granted, is unlikely to fail with me. From the outset, one knows this will do all the right things and lull us into that false sense of idealised romanticism, however in love and romance I am certainly not a fair and rational person, and I always succumb.

my ode to love

I liked Sophie Dahl in this episode of the Delicious Miss Dahl. From it I'd say she's definitely had her fair share of heart ache and is therefore educated sufficiently in the subject matter to woo us with her food. I have to say Buckwheat Blinis are on now firmly my cookery-based to-do list.  I liked her twists in the classic Shepard's pie, and cooking scallops. In their shells. On the barbecue. Oh come on, it oozes over-the-top-excesses of romantic liason. Being a bit overly curious, I did wonder when and where she filmed this episode, because I certainly missed the barbecue-summer that warranted outdoor cooking in a halterneck dress.

Again the programme reawakened my hibernating music muses including Sia's I go to sleep and Regina Spektor's Eet. And she included a poem by Wendy Cope, After the Lunch,  which I heart muchly, and an excerpt from the Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. I also newly discovered, He Loved Three Things by Anna Akhmatova.

On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love."

~ Wendy Cope, After the Lunch

What I liked about this programme was that it wasn't too obvious. It didn't go down the gushy pulp road. Graveyards and old bookshops was a refreshingly new look at love. And she almost hit that, 'I thought only I thought that' button. I think, in a way, this style is quite 'cool' these days. But when you're throwing rationality and fairness out of the window, I'll let the Delicious Miss Dahl off.

Food as an expression of decadent love. I wholeheartedly concur.