Review: Love in a Cold Climate (TV)

Name: Love in a Cold Climate

Starring: Rosamund Pike, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh, Megan Dodds, Javier Alcina

Length: 2 hours 30 mins, over two episodes

Year: 2002

I’ve cheated! Love in a Cold Climate is still on my to-read list, but it is also on Netflix. After a busy weekend earlier this month, I conked out on the sofa, tuned into this mini-series and made a Christmas pom-pom.

The BBC adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate

Three upper-class girls in the 1930s are looking for love, and maybe even marriage. After a fairly dowdy coming-out ball, things start to get interesting for them. Our narrator, Fanny (Rosamund Pike), is constantly being compared to her mother, the infamous ‘Bolter’, a woman of – shall we say – a loose moral persuasion, according to the rigid standards of the time. I read about a real-life Bolter a few years ago in a book by Francis Osborne, and Idina Sackville was apparently the inspiration for Fanny's mother.

Polly, Fanny’s beautiful friend, has to endure ball after ball while her snobbish mother, Lady Montdore, waxes lyrical over her daughter’s apparent ambivalence to romance. It is Polly who questions, on returning from Imperial India, how love will differ in a cold climate. The secrets of her heart are revealed when she marries her uncle, her mother’s lover, the promiscuous ‘Boy’, scandalising society and officially cutting ties with the outraged Lady Montdore.

Fanny’s cousin, Linda (Elizabeth Dermot Walsh), defies her father by marrying a German man, and in doing so appears to fall on her feet, having both of the boxes ‘marriage’ and ‘love’ ticked. That is, until it goes pear-shaped when Linda’s head and heart are turned by a communist speaker in Hyde Park. Her story was my favourite, as her pursuit of true love takes her around the world and back again, ending in England during the Blitz.

This TV adaptation combines both Love in a Cold Climate and Pursuit of Love, so I’m not one hundred percent sure where one story began and the other ended. All the more reason to read the books! The show was pacy and depicted the girls' spirit as they navigated life, love and society in the changing world between the wars. The characters around them were eccentric and not always that likeable, which made Fanny, Polly and Linda all the more endearing.

One for a rainy Sunday afternoon!

Books to Read

The ten books I'd like to read next (and potentially review!)

1. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

An old and distant relative of mine was Evelyn Waugh's housemaid when he was a boy in Somerset. That's as good a reason as any to start reading his books!

2. Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favelli

This is technically a children's book, but it just sounds so fab.

3. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

This literary stalwart set in the USA's deep south in the 1930s has been on my radar for years. I've been building up to it and think I'm ready...

4. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

I am unashamedly judging this book by its cover. Just look at that shine!

5. Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba

So many wonderful and inspirational women lived in Paris during Nazi occupation - fashion designers, spies, novelists, racing drivers - and this book tells their true stories.

6. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

This one has been on the Christmas list for years. Will 2017 be the year, Father C?

7. The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida

I rubbed shoulders with Elise in her wonderful creative writing class a couple of years ago. Am so excited to read her epic sweep of a novel when it comes out in 2018.

8. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

As a big Potter fan I have utter faith in J.K.'s talents.

9. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

This sequel to one of my favourite books, Life After Life, promises to reveal what happened to the world's loveliest character, Teddy. I'm borrowing this one from Mum so will have to read it quick.

10. Changing my Mind by Zadie Smith

I like changing my mind too, so I think I'll get on well with Zadie's essays on her influences and inspirations.