Darling: A razor-sharp, gloriously funny retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love

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Knight also takes a gleeful magnifying glass to the hypocrisies of modern life, from rigorous dieter Blanche going to restaurants solely for social media content, to Christian making Linda do all the housework, because paying a cleaner is “immoral”.

Husband two, anti-capitalist Christian (nicknamed “posh Trot” by Uncle Matthew), meanwhile, is an Old Etonian who puts about a myth that he grew up on a housing estate in Doncaster. As well as Mitford, there is something of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s much-adored Cazalet Chronicles in here, plus elements of Eva Rice’s The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets and Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack. Then, as the weeks went by and the giddiness subsided, the immensity — and effrontery — of the task lumbered monstrously into view. But I will stop listing them now, as you really need to read them in their wonderfully written rant mode to fully appreciate them! Darling is a modern re-telling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, and anyone familiar with that book will recognise the clever updating of the people, places and societal nuances of the original.Darling is the story of her growing up: the people she meets; the men she falls in love with; and her friendship, enduring and eternal, with Frances. There always seems to be another volume of collected letters, or a gorgeous edition, or a biography coming out; the most recent was Laura Thompson’s 2016 group study The Six. His violently arbitrary, Nicky Haslam-style hatreds pepper the pages: enoki mushrooms, thin socks or open-mouthed Instagrammers.

All the old faces are there, ripe to take on the modern world; Franny’s mother The Bolter fits surprisingly well into the 21 st century, as does Lord Merlin, who is now an avant-garde fashion designer, and who was before his time in the original in any case.Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.

Eventually Linda does find her way out from the bosom of her deeply eccentric extended family, and moves to London to become a model. A razor-sharp, laugh-out-loud novel that re-imagines the cast of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. I actually snorted with laughter in several bits of it - particularly when Uncle Matthew and Davey get obsessed with Instagram. I could never square Uncle Matthew with his past life, and Linda’s final husband is too good to be true. Only two bars of signal in an abandoned pig ark connect the home-schooled siblings and the narrator, cousin Franny (no longer Fanny, understandably), to the outside world.Public service announcement for fellow Nancy Mitford fans: India Knight’s modern retelling, Darling, is HEAVEN. There is an eclectic supporting cast who are excellently described – Davey and his gut health being very informative! Darling is also in that vein, that serves a heightened sense of reality in a decidedly upper-middle-class world, where worries are real but they are less where the money for the mortgage is going to come from and more will they be able to afford a junior suite at the Ritz in Paris, or will it have to be a mere double room. How on earth do you transpose a novel so distinctive, and whose plot hinges on the fraught political backdrop of early 20th-century Europe, to today’s world? Knight manages to be faithful to that beloved comfort read whilst updating the setting and characters to the present (albeit still in a bohemian-aristo thoroughly English way).