In modern parlance, this feels like a reboot of a beloved series, a treat for the fans of Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love (and maybe The Blessing too as Sigi and his family features here).

It was comforting to be in Mitford's capable and deft hands, and to have Fanny more front and centre. I enjoyed a lot of the social commentary (Mitford is really showing off here with her insider knowledge of English-French relations from politics to polite societies) and youthful rebellions and inevitable intergenerational disputes. Truly nothing ever changes! ( )

Errant sons, immovable former occupant and social secretary who is more of a social butterfly plague Fanny after her husband is made ambassador to France.

Oh this was a lot of fun. Ostensibly the third book of the series that includes Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, it's been so many years since I read the first two that I barely remember the important characters, but it made not a lick of difference. Don't Tell Alfred takes place 30 years after the events of the first two books, and anybody who is still alive is almost too different to recognise anyway.

Fanny is now the main character, rather than just the narrator, but it seems she's also a helpless bystander in the three ring circus her life has become when Alfred becomes the Ambassador to France. One hilarious calamity after the other - most involving her extended family, if not her own children - has her scurrying to keep one step ahead of the chaos, and if not one step ahead, arranging the fall out so that Alfred comes out looking his best.

Not quite under the surface of these calamities - it bubbles up regularly throughout the story - is every parents lament over their childrens' avowal to reject every principle they were ever taught. This being the late 50's, the rejection is, as the age of Aquarius looms, that much more outsized and outrageous.

Throughout the narrative, Mitford takes potshots in turns at the British, the French and, of course, the Americans (I'm pretty sure it's a national sport in the UK); about the only country to come out unscathed from her pen are the Irish, which she feels a rather lot of sympathy for. It all reads as though it's meant in good fun and it adds to the often manic laughs.

So far, Mitford is 3 for 3; I have a couple of her other titles on my TBR and I'm curious how well the humor will hold with a whole new cast of characters. ( )

This follows Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love when Fanny is middle-aged and less confident in her abilities as she faces a life in Parisian high society attendant with her husband Alfred's appointment as Ambassador to France. Filled with eccentric characters, Mitford's writing is, as always, witty and sparkling. ( )

This is the third book in Nancy Mitford's loose series that started with The Pursuit of Love. Instead of narrating the more glamorous lives of her cousin and friend respectively, Fanny has center stage here as she and her husband move to Paris after he becomes the ambassador to France.

While the first two books occurred more or less contemporaneously, this book happens many years down the road, with Fanny's children all in their late teens/early adulthood and the war years firmly behind them. This title also seems to lean more into the humor, with really no sad events occurring. Fanny's life as wife of ambassador is full of small trials and tribulations, like the previous ambassadress refusing to give up the residence, an obnoxious journalist who writes about them as though writing for a gossip column, a silly secretary who never does her work but is a beloved family member so must stay, and so on. Meanwhile, her children keep giving Fanny grief by rebelling against conformity, each in his own way.

There are definitely some connections here to the previous two books, but most of the main characters from those titles are sidelined here with only a few brief mentions. This title could more or less stand on its own. For those who did read the predecessor novels though, this is a little bit like visiting with old friends again -- comforting and entertaining for a little while at least. ( )