In modern parlance, this feels like a reboot of a beloved series, a treat for the fans of Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love (and maybe The Blessing too as Sigi and his family features here).

It was comforting to be in Mitford's capable and deft hands, and to have Fanny more front and centre. I enjoyed a lot of the social commentary (Mitford is really showing off here with her insider knowledge of English-French relations from politics to polite societies) and youthful rebellions and inevitable intergenerational disputes. Truly nothing ever changes! ( )

Cuando Alfred es nombrado embajador en París, su mujer, Fanny, se convertirá en la encargada de manejar los asuntos cotidianos de la embajada. De repente se verá alternando con la aristocracia y lo más granado de la sociedad parisina, dando cócteles y cenas, y contemplando asombrada como cada nimio detalle de su vida es aireado en los periódicos. Por si fuera poco, tendrá que mediar en los asuntos sentimentales de sus amigos y encauzar a sus indómitos hijos, cuyos modernos estilos de vida -uno es teddy boy y otro hippie- no termina de comprender. Además, parece que una crisis diplomática está a punto de estallar, dejando claro que la vida en una embajada es todo menos aburrida.

Errant sons, immovable former occupant and social secretary who is more of a social butterfly plague Fanny after her husband is made ambassador to France.

Oh this was a lot of fun. Ostensibly the third book of the series that includes Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, it's been so many years since I read the first two that I barely remember the important characters, but it made not a lick of difference. Don't Tell Alfred takes place 30 years after the events of the first two books, and anybody who is still alive is almost too different to recognise anyway.

Fanny is now the main character, rather than just the narrator, but it seems she's also a helpless bystander in the three ring circus her life has become when Alfred becomes the Ambassador to France. One hilarious calamity after the other - most involving her extended family, if not her own children - has her scurrying to keep one step ahead of the chaos, and if not one step ahead, arranging the fall out so that Alfred comes out looking his best.

Not quite under the surface of these calamities - it bubbles up regularly throughout the story - is every parents lament over their childrens' avowal to reject every principle they were ever taught. This being the late 50's, the rejection is, as the age of Aquarius looms, that much more outsized and outrageous.

Throughout the narrative, Mitford takes potshots in turns at the British, the French and, of course, the Americans (I'm pretty sure it's a national sport in the UK); about the only country to come out unscathed from her pen are the Irish, which she feels a rather lot of sympathy for. It all reads as though it's meant in good fun and it adds to the often manic laughs.

So far, Mitford is 3 for 3; I have a couple of her other titles on my TBR and I'm curious how well the humor will hold with a whole new cast of characters. ( )

This follows Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love when Fanny is middle-aged and less confident in her abilities as she faces a life in Parisian high society attendant with her husband Alfred's appointment as Ambassador to France. Filled with eccentric characters, Mitford's writing is, as always, witty and sparkling. ( )