The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London

(Paperback)

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'Oh, the horror of love!' Nancy Mitford once exclaimed. Elegant and intelligent, Nancy was a reknowned wit and a popular author. Yet this bright, waspish woman, capable of unerring emotional analysis in her work gave her heart to a well-known philanderer who went on to marry another woman. Was Nancy that unremarkable thing - a deluded lover - or was she a remarkable woman engaged in a sophisticated love affair

Gaston Palewski, was the Free French commander and one of the most influential politicians in post-war Europe. His and Nancy's mutual life was spent amongst the most exciting, powerful and controversial figures in the centre of reawakening Europe. She supported him throughout his tumultuous career and he inspired some of her best work, including The Pursuit of Love.

Lisa Hilton's provocative book reveals how, with discipline, gentleness and a great deal of elegance, Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski achieved a very adult ideal.

Reviews

This is an account of Nancy Mitford's only real love affair and its title is taken from an exclamation she made to her sister Diana Mosley... it is a story with a delicious mix of drama, melancholy and enchantment * DAILY EXPRESS *
Hilton's style is positively edible * OBSERVER *
Nancy Mitford was elegant, clever, witty and exceptionally beady-eyed about the world. So why did she have such awful taste in men This is the subject of the historian Lisa Hilton's entertainingly caustic The Horror of Love... Her book is not just a crisply written account of their relationship but also something of a manifesto for a more pragmantic, Gallic approach to human relations -- Daisy Goodwin * SUNDAY TIMES *
A biography of the love affair between Nancy Mitford and the Free French commander who inspired her to write her most famous novel, THE PURSUIT OF LOVE. Drawing on unpublished correspondence, this is a sympathetic and cautionary tale about falling for a philanderer * TATLER *
This biography of Nancy Mitford's tumultuous post-war love affair with Gaston Palewski (immortalised in The Pursuit of Love as Fabrice de Sauveterre) paints a portrait of a relationship as agonising as it was intense, sweeping the reader up with conspiratorial ease * EASY LIVING *
Nancy Mitford was an English novelist with a glamour that surpassed even that of her aristocratic sisters. Her lover, Gaston Palewski, was a French politician who featured in disguised form in two of her novels. Their relationship became a tragedy. Mitford fans will love this book, of course, though it says so much more about the compromises and tragedies of love * CATHOLIC HERALD *
Well paced and informative * EVENING STANDARD *
Nancy Mitofrd, aristocrat, author, waspish wit, first laid eyes on Gaston Palewski in 1942 and, for her, it was love at first sight that lasted a lifetime... but the great tragedy of Nancy's life was that to him, she was never "the one"... a compelling account of the 1944 liberation of France and the country's struggle to confront the collaboration... there is so much charm and drama to Nancy and Gaston's lives, embroiled as they were in the key events of the 20th-century * SUNDAY EXPRESS *
The charm of THE HORROR OF LOVE is its bringing to life the worlds of Nancy Mitford's novels. Its portrait of upper-class postwar Paris, Palewski's femmes du monde extravagantly garbed in Dior's New Look, Mitford and Palewski's shared love of history, paintings and antiques, the glittering parties in splendid houses and the regular recurrence of the Duchess of Devonshire, will surely appeal to Mitford fans, in this book which delights in the more picturesque aspects of its subject. * INDEPENDENT *
Nancy Mitford - novelist, socialite, most gifted of the famous sisters - pursued a one-sided 30-year affair with French Resistance hero turned diplomat and minister, Gaston Palewski. Hilton's book brings a sharp historian's eye to glittering Paris and London backdrops as this impossible romance unfolds * i newspaper *
An excellent study of passion. -- William Leith * EVENING STANDARD *
Hilton has no truck with those who claim that Nancy died of a broken heart; her crisply written book is instead something of a manifesto for a more pragmatic, Gallic approach to human relations. -- Daisy Goodwin * THE SUNDAY TIMES *
An extraordinary, yet also typical, love affair told with sympathy and intelligence. * THE SUNDAY HERALD *
Not a "Mitford book", says Hilton, but this nicely barbed reappraisal of Nancy's 30-year affair with politician and unlikely philanderer Palewski extrapolates heavily from her world and writings. * THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH SEVEN Magazine *
For those who like the work and life of Nancy Mitford this will also be a most useful and entertaining biography. * CONTEMPORARY REVIEW *
Makes for fascinating reading. * THE GOOD BOOK GUIDE *
It is true passion that this volume focuses on. * THIS ENGLAND *
Delectable * THE INDEPENDENT *

Author Bio

Lisa Hilton is the critically acclaimed author of Athenais: The Real Queen of France, Mistress Peachum's Pleasure and Queens Consort. Her novel The House With the Blue Shutters was shortlisted in the UK for the Commonwealth Fiction prize. She was educated at Oxford University and lives in central London.