Uploaded May 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
In our opening salvo devoted to letters, we cited the surprise hit of 2013, Letters of Note, in which its editor, Simon Usher, had culled and copied some of the most engaging personal letters of all time, thereby precipitating the extraordinarily successful stage show, Letters Live.
Its sequel, More Letters of Note, is equally intriguing, but covers a different range altogether; and while it doesn't include the authors cited here, handsomely complements its predecessor.
In our continuing series of vignettes devoted to letters, certain authors are standouts. Not only are they consistently readable (not always the case in a full-length book), but the letters themselves are varied, encompassing a vast range of topics.
One such writer is Nancy Mitford, whose Letters of Nancy Mitford remains an emblem of her literary career. Addressing the likes of her lover, Gaston Palewski, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and her innumerable, demanding sisters, this lovely, gossipy book, runs the gamut from humour to bathos with seemingly effortless ease.
So, too, the exchanges between one of her sisters, the Duchess of Devonshire, and her devoted, lifelong friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor, written across half a century and multiple continents. In Tearing Haste, handsomely edited by Charlotte Mosley (who is married to Nancy Mitford's nephew), is a humorous delight from start to finish.
Darling Monster - Diana Cooper's letters to her son, John Julius Norwich, in his youth - is equally inimitable; while the Americans, far from being outdone, are admirably represented by the peerless S.J. Perelman, whose Don't Tread On Me is a peerless anthology of some of the funniest letters ever written.
All in all, a handsome cross-section of the literary treasure trove that is the world of letters.
Video clip courtesy of Letters Live
More "Annals of the Hoare house" at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/annals-of-the-hoare-house
In our opening salvo devoted to letters, we cited the surprise hit of 2013, Letters of Note, in which its editor, Simon Usher, had culled and copied some of the most engaging personal letters of all time, thereby precipitating the extraordinarily successful stage show, Letters Live.
Its sequel, More Letters of Note, is equally intriguing, but covers a different range altogether; and while it doesn't include the authors cited here, handsomely complements its predecessor.
In our continuing series of vignettes devoted to letters, certain authors are standouts. Not only are they consistently readable (not always the case in a full-length book), but the letters themselves are varied, encompassing a vast range of topics.
One such writer is Nancy Mitford, whose Letters of Nancy Mitford remains an emblem of her literary career. Addressing the likes of her lover, Gaston Palewski, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and her innumerable, demanding sisters, this lovely, gossipy book, runs the gamut from humour to bathos with seemingly effortless ease.
So, too, the exchanges between one of her sisters, the Duchess of Devonshire, and her devoted, lifelong friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor, written across half a century and multiple continents. In Tearing Haste, handsomely edited by Charlotte Mosley (who is married to Nancy Mitford's nephew), is a humorous delight from start to finish.
Darling Monster - Diana Cooper's letters to her son, John Julius Norwich, in his youth - is equally inimitable; while the Americans, far from being outdone, are admirably represented by the peerless S.J. Perelman, whose Don't Tread On Me is a peerless anthology of some of the funniest letters ever written.
All in all, a handsome cross-section of the literary treasure trove that is the world of letters.
Video clip courtesy of Letters Live
More "Annals of the Hoare house" at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/annals-of-the-hoare-house
