The Blessing - Tapa blanda

With characteristically amusing malice, Mitford blends a comedy of manners with culture shock as Grace Allingham, a naive English rose, impulsively marries Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, a French nobleman with all his class's charm and decadence. Both are duped, however, by their son Sigismund -- the Blessing of the title -- a juvenile Machiavelli who mixes Gallic cunning with Saxon thoroughness to become one of Mitford's most memorable characters.

Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) was born in London, the eldest child of the second Baron Redesdale. She had written four novels, including Wigs on the Green (1935), before the success of The Pursuit of Love in 1945, which she followed with Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). She also wrote four works of biography. Nancy Mitford was awarded the CBE in 1972.