HORROR OF LOVE: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski

Immortalised as the dashing Patrice de Sauveterre in Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, Gaston Palewski was Nancy's lover in the war years when her marriage was disintegrating. Nancy's husband, the good-looking Honourable Peter Rodd ("Prod"), was universally regarded as unbelievably boring, a view Nancy shared. This lively and readable double biography recounts the intertwined lives of Nancy and Gaston. The six Mitford sisters are the stuff of legend and in her teenage years Nancy shared the Fascist sympathies of her sisters Diana and Unity, but at some point Nancy saw the light and during the war was requested by a friend at the War Office to infiltrate the Free French Officers' Club. De Gaulle had set up the Free French headquarters in London at 4 Carlton Gardens, and Gaston was de Gaulle's right hand man, escaping to England from Tangiers at the start of the French occupation. While De Gaulle would dine at the Ritz, the Connaught or the Savoy, Gaston preferred the Dorchester or the Travellers' club, though he wearied of London life and briefly returned to command the Free French forces in North Africa. Nancy met Gaston in 1942, both of them habitues of London's upper class bomb shelter, "the Dorch". He was everything a classic French lover should be, sensitive, someone who actually liked women, a good lover. After the war Nancy went to live in Paris, where she wrote prolifically, while her romance with Gaston gradually subsided into friendship. The affair provided Nancy with many memorable scenes in her novels, for instance the corridor-creeping at country house parties, and Nancy also drew on the experiences of her friends Diana Cooper and Diana Mosley, neither of whose marriages were monogamous. A fascinating portrait of an era. 290pp. Remainder mark, US import.