Polly combines youth, fortune and beauty, but she seems – unlike the narrator herself – untouchable by love. Her mother even tries introducing the infamous Fabrice to thaw Polly’s coldness, but without success. Nancy Mitford made no bones about filling her funniest book, Love In A Cold Climate, with people she knew, including her own father, depicted cracking his stock whip and fulminating against Germans.

Introduced by Pauline Tennant

‘Undeniably frivolous and light as a soufflé, it nevertheless gave the reader a true insight into aristocratic life in England. This was something that many authors had attempted to envisage . . . but no one had done it with such intimacy and humour’