Don't Tell Alfred [Mass Market Paperback]

Nancy Mitford (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited; First Thus edition (1963)
• ASIN: B000RW9Q5Q
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,561,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but not Mitford's best, February 8, 2002

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Tell Alfred (Paperback)

Don't Tell Alfred catches up with some of the characters from The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford's two masterpieces. Once again Fanny Logan is the narrator, but this time the action is set in Paris, where Fanny's husband has been appointed the British Ambassador. Fanny has to deal with the problem of the preceding Ambassadress still being in residence and refusing to leave, then with the multiple problems that come with being related to the Radletts, who are made out to be the battiest aristocrats in Britain.

Don't Tell Alfred was written in the late 1950s while Nancy Mitford was living in Paris. A lot of the political inside jokes will fly right over the heads of most readers today, and Mitford's attempts to depict Teddy Boys and rock and roll bands must have seemed unintentionally comic even then.

Even though this is not one of Mitford's best works, it does have her sharp wit and felicitous turns of phrase, and for those alone the book is well worth the reading.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mitford's British Satire, Don't Tell Alfred, December 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Don't Tell Alfred (Paperback)

Nancy Mitford wrote this delightful novel in 1960. Lady Wincham, the unworldly wife of an Oxford Don, is apprehensive when she discovers her husband has been appointed the new ambassador to France. When the Winchams arrive at their new residence, they find that the previous ambassador's wife has refused to leave. Mitford gives a tongue in cheek look at the love/hate relationship between England and France. Alfred Wincham must weather a crisis when a teenage rock star causes a riot of fans in front of the official residence. Mitford fills the book with memorable characters, such as Northey, the lovely but impractical secretary, and the rebellious sons who leave their boarding school to take a high paying factory job. Charles-Eduard, the sophisticated French aristocrat, and his English wife, Grace, are on hand to give the Winchams advice on living in France. Mitford enjoys poking fun at both the English and French. Her humor is more sophisticated than P.G. Wodehouse, but will give the reader some good laughs. If you enjoy this, you may want to read Christmas Pudding or the Blessing.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the love of Northey, December 27, 2000

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Tell Alfred (Paperback)

Nancy Mitford continues the lives and loves of the Radlett family and their various off-spring. In this Fanny, our narrator, first met in the impeccably charming novel "Pursuit of Love", is now in France of the 1950's with her teenage boys bordering on adulthood and jobs. Her husband, Alfred, has moved from the safe cloisters of Oxford into the dizzying world of international diplomacy and is Ambassador for France. Their first problem is getting rid of the old Ambassadress, Pauline, who, despite having been despatched from the embassy onto a train the week before, is discovered holding court to French society in a lesser used wing and shows little sign of budging.

Into this all falls Northey, the daughter of Fanny's cousin, Louisa. Northey has been sent by Louisa to act as Fanny's social secretary, but proves herself singularly unsuited to the position being unable to speak French, and it seems pathologically disinclined to do a lick of work. She is in the way of the British upper-classes, immensely charming and so this is really mostly the story of Northey's pursuit of love. Perhaps not as satirically funny as Mitford's first book in the series but it is still an amusing and witty novel. Characters waltz in and out of scenes without any respect for the plot but with enormous charm and verve. You could still read this book without ever having read any of the others in the series but it would certainly make a lot more sense.