RHYS BOWEN: As you probably know, I have always been fascinated with the Thirties. It seemed such a time of glamor and excess to someone brought up in the bleak post-war period. I read Bertie Wooster and Peter Wimsey with disbelief that such lives existed. Did people once have house parties, drive around stealing policemen’s helmets, drink champagne from slippers. How different from my life of rationing, making do.
I found The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate on my mother’s bookshelf when I was in my teens and devoured them. I identified strongly with the ‘normal’ cousin Fanny, feeling awkward and out of place with her eccentric cousins, but secretly I wished that I had less boring relatives. Later I learned that the eccentric family was modeled on Nancy Mitford’s own. They were uneducated, except for a string of governesses who came and went rapidly, thanks to their pranks, and they really did have a father who hunted them with bloodhounds--which they thought was great fun.
As an adult I have read the biographies of the Mitford Sisters, and what an extreme bunch they were: two were passionate Nazis (one married Sir Oswald Mosely and spent the war behind bars, another shot herself for love of Hitler) , one extreme Communist, Nancy the writer. Deborah, the youngest, was the most traditional, marrying a Duke and living happily ever after.
Here is the article I just read. Informative if you don't know the sisters!
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210722-the-pursuit-of-love-britains-most-scandalous-family
Having married an upper class chap myself I find there is a connection as John was at school with one of Nancy Mitford’s boys and played rugby with him. I confess their lives have influenced my Royal Spyness novels, although the Bolter was not Nancy’s invention. There was a real life Bolter long before called Idina Sackville (she features in my book Love and Death Among the Cheetahs).
A few years ago the BBC did a TV adaptation of the novels and I thought it was very good. Spot on, as we would way. It stayed true to the story and I especially loved the over-the-top gay counsin Cedric who inherits “the whole pile”.
This week I learn that they have made another version that is now available on Prime. I’ll have to watch when I can tear myself away from the Olympics but I will watch with trepidation, because most recent remakes have disappointed me. I loved Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and saw no reason to remake those stories.
I adored All Creatures Great and Small in its original version (having been a friend of Robert Hardy when I worked in BBC drama). I found the remake really annoying, straying from the stories, enhancing the drama including a Christmas Eve when James and Helen are stranded together. What I found charming in the original series was the ordinary nature of the stories--small successes and failures with saving calves and horses plus James’s quiet courtship of Helen.
There have been many versions of Little Women and I didn't particularly like the latest. Lots of Poirot until nobody could beat David Suchet.
So I’m not sure I want to watch the new version. I probably shall, muttering all the time and annoying John when I point out what they have got wrong.
So what do you think? Remakes better or worse? Which ones have succeeded, and which failed miserably?
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And one more thing Red readers! You know by now that both Jenn and Lucy had new books out last week (WAIT FOR IT and A SCONE OF CONTENTION.) We'll be chatting together with Sun Sentinel Book Reviewer Oline Cogdill at 6 pm tonight, sponsored by Murder on the Beach! To join the webinar, you will need to register by calling 561-279-7790 or emailing murdermb@gate.net.
Please come, and please consider purchasing a book from that wonderful indie bookstore while you're there!
