Reception
The book received a wide UK release in December 2008 and has so far been generally favorably reviewed. Although several reviewers were not able to reconcile Mitford's previous association with the Nazi regime.
The book has also been satirized by the "Digested Read" column in The Guardian.
Valerie Grove of The Times attempted to distance herself from any political position in reviewing the book "I hope I can praise Diana Mosley without being suspected of fascist sympathies". She continued with praise "Her opening gambits are arresting...Dipping into this book at your bedside is like browsing in a great nonfiction library stuffed with lives and letters, each subject brightly and sharply illuminated."
David Sexton of the Evening Standard described the book as "Sharp, funny, debunking." But he criticized her political positions citing "her completely unrepentant support not just of her beloved Mosley but of "the Führer" as she continued to call him (attentive to titles, she liked to snub Churchill by referring to him as "Mr Churchill") is ultimately indefensible and that fact has to be faced, not sidestepped or swept under the carpet."
"Like her thin, upright, elegant figure her prose, which she did not begin to write until in her 40s, has no fat on it - a succinctness also to be found in her letters...She was also the possessor of an oblique, ironic wit that pervades most of her writings". de Courcy also praised Mosley's "sharp and receptive" published book reviews as well as the portraits included. Anne de Courcy, Daily Mail
Writing in the Daily Telegraph reviewer Duncan Fallowell questioned Mosley's contradictions between her personal and political life. Fallowell described the publication; "this strange, fascinating book revives the turbulence at a time when the Mitford industry seemed to be moving into a cosy corner. It is made up mostly of book reviews but her agile mind and the sulphurous life lend them weight."
"It represents the life in writing of a fascinating woman...these writings are testimony to the sheer rigour of her thought and the crispness and elegance of her prose...Her command of history and understanding of the machinations of politics are formidable, and evident in pieces on the Dreyfus affair, Suez crisis and Profumo scandal." Catherine Heaney, Irish Times
The Sunday Telegraph recently selected the book for its section "pick of the paperback". The reviewers praised Mosley's "love of laughter and witty observation of friends such as Evelyn Waugh, Harold Action and James Lees-Milne" and described her recollection as a "delight". They also described the book as a "fascinating" collection.
Read more about this topic: The Pursuit Of Laughter
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)