Nancy Mitford's dual novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are two of my favorite books and never fail to lift me up when I get depressed. In both of them, a devastatingly charming Frenchman, Fabrice, the Duke de Sauveterre,plays a central role. In real life, Fabrice was Gaston Palewski, one of Charles de Gualle's most trusted Resistance supporters and then a member of de Gualle's successive governments. He was also the love of Mitford's life.

This book covers the familiar Mitford ground of the eccentric family and it isn't until we are halfway through the book that we finally come to the main event of the Nancy/Gaston love affair. Unlike her frothy novels, after a cople of years of blissful happiiness, the affair was mostly one-sided on Mitford's side. Gaston is almost a prototypical Frenchman - charming, urbane and unable to be faithful.

Mitford is shown to be continually keeping up a good front, but not earning much happiness despite all her efforts. Sometimes life cannot imitate art. ( )

I have nearly every biography/autobiography written about and by the Mitfords and this has got to be the worst, even more than Decca's letters.

The phrasing, composition and lack of correct punctuation makes this book unreadable. I persevered thinking it may be me, but it isn't!

The author has gone through every biography she can find on the two subjects and copied, not verbatim, but nearly. The result is a complete mish mash of facts, some not factually correct. I'm surprised that Debo agreed to a telephone interview and I hope to goodness she hasn't read it.

Conclusion - this author has not got an original idea in her head and cannot write.

I could not pursue this book any further than about the first fifty pages. I found the language laboured, the phrasing difficult - almost like a poor translation, and the content quite boring.

I am an avid reader of well-researched biographies and historical work, and I have been very fond of Nancy Mitford .... well, all of that family and the era in which they lived ... but could not find anything to interest me in this book. ( )

Horror of Love is a unique, fascinating addition to the Mitford cannon of books. It covers, in depth, some of the most interesting times and aspects of Nancy’s life, like her early love relationships, her involvement in helping victims of the Spanish civil war, her experiences in London during WWII and her life afterward in France. There is a lot more background on wartime and post-war Europe than I’ve seen in other Mitford books, and it’s packed with intriguing information about Gaston Palewski, Nancy’s longtime love, including his political beliefs, his relationship to Charles De Gaulle, his wartime activities, his post-war government career, his flirtations with other women and his eventual marriage--not to Nancy--which wasn’t the ideal match that he must have hoped it would be.

Gaston might have been better off marrying Nancy, with whom he remained close until her death, but author Lisa Hilton makes a strong case that while Nancy had hoped Gaston would marry her, the love she felt for Gaston and pleasure she took in his company and their romance was valid and clear-eyed, not deluded or pitiable, a viewpoint that differs somewhat from other of Nancy’s biographers. Another difference is Hilton sees no hypocrisy in Nancy’s denunciation of Diana to British authorities, which as it turns out wasn’t what lead to Diana’s horrific incarceration during the war anyway, that was the work of Diana’s ex-father-in-law. As Hilton sees it, Nancy had good reason to wonder what Diana was up to in her many prewar visits to Germany, and Nancy did her patriotic duty to tell authorities about her doubts when they asked. While Diana was incarcerated Nancy then did her sisterly duty by supporting her everyway she could. Diana and Nancy were close for the rest of Nancy’s life, and it wasn’t until after her death that Diana found out what Nancy had done.

In general, Lisa Hilton takes Nancy refreshingly seriously, and without blindly agreeing with all of Nancy’s opinions Hilton respects Nancy as an astute observer of culture and an intelligent and insightful writer., Nancy’s wit, determination to laugh, and refusal to dwell on ugliness are celebrated and showcased in Horror of Love. That, and Hilton’s fresh and somewhat controversial evaluation of Nancy’s life make Horror of Love worth reading for anyone interested in the Mitford family. ( )