PositiveAir MailFaced with a subject whose internal life often remains elusive, Thompson herself adopts an essentially Mitfordian approach. Rather than fixate on Nancy’s bruised psyche, she provides a breezy account of her many misfortunes and belated triumphs as the daughter of a tyrannical father and neglectful mother ... In an effervescent style that seems to channel Nancy’s own writing, Thompson challenges us to embrace the Mitfords’ singular sense of fun ... Thompson’s scrupulousness in separating fact from fiction is paralleled by her attentiveness to Nancy’s flaws ... The final third of Thompson’s book...becomes a bit humdrum. But in her account of the author’s eccentric upbringing, romantic travails, and politically charged family feuds, she captures the essence of the Mitford spirit—\'so light and airy, so dark and remorseless,\' as Thompson puts it—that Nancy both defined and transcended.
Catherine Bailey
PositiveAir MailLike The Damned, Luchino Visconti’s film about the demise of the old aristocratic order during the early years of Nazi rule, the first few chapters of A Castle in Wartime teem with such Grand Guignol grotesquerie on all sides ... Bailey tends to play down Hassell’s initial ambivalence toward the Nazis, whose opposition to the Versailles Treaty and irredentist ambitions chimed with his own conservative nationalism. The nuances of the diplomat’s evolution from reluctant fellow traveler to Resistance hero thus become somewhat obscured in her book. Bailey is more assured when recounting the torments undergone by Fey [von Hassell], whose story serves as a poignant illustration of how even the most charmed existence could unravel amid the vicissitudes of total war ... Bailey chronicles all these twists and turns with verve and compassion in a book that illuminates individual human helplessness and fortitude in the face of overwhelming historical upheaval.
