Bettie's Books

Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Laura

Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners

Read from December 15 to 20, 2013

BOTW

BBC description: This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge

Producer: David Roper Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.

2. Lady Diana sets up a smallholding in Sussex for the war effort. She will not dig for victory, but will certainly milk a cow in order to produce her own cheese.

3. Lady Diana moves into the French embassy, along with her husband the politician Duff Cooper and his lover Louise de Vilmorin. Their parties become legendary.

4. Duff and Diana Cooper continue their travels, taking in Venice, Marrakesh, Tangier, Algiers and Seville. At home in 1949, all hopes are pinned on the dawn of a new era.

5. John Julius Norwich is now a student at Oxford, while his mother Lady Diana Cooper continues to live in France. Her husband Duff is offered a peerage.

Couldn't muster any interest over this one. At one point she calls someone a bore because they insisted on talking about their bomb when one is only interested in one's own bomb.

I would expand to say that one cannot take interest in another's letters (aren't letters supposed to be private?), however that renders me as similarly crass.

Next! and please let it be worth my time.