Plot
As in the previous novels, Don't Tell Alfred is narrated by Fanny, now middle-aged and dealing with her own problems. Her husband Alfred Wincham, an Oxford don, has long been settled at this university as the Waynflete Professor of Pastoral Theology but has now been named as the apparently unlikely British Ambassador to France. The novel suggests that this is a reward for the now "Sir" Alfred Wincham's "war work", but Fanny is unclear about her husband's role during this period. Fanny finds herself uprooted from Oxford and moving to a grand Embassy in Paris. She is at first clumsy and naive about Embassy life, but she is aided by Philip Cliffe-Musgrave. A former student of Alfred's and friend of the family, the young career diplomat, Philip, is at ease in the complex world of French politics and society. He and Fanny work together to find a way to dislodge the former ambassadress who has retained residence in the Embassy and try to smooth the way for Alfred to concentrate on the complexities of his new position. Various characters in the novel often mutter, "Don't tell Alfred," when anything difficult or dramatic occurs in the day-to-day life of the Embassy, hence the title. Fanny must also contend with her four free-thinking sons, her social secretary Northey (also her cousin Louisa's daughter) who spends more time leading a hectic social life in Paris, with a trail of suitors behind her, than actually working, and a grumpy gossip columnist who skews everything that happens at the Embassy into embarrassing and untrue news stories.
Unlike the previous novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate , Fanny's narration focuses on her own life, rather than that of other people. This novel does provide details about the lives of some other characters from these novels and The Blessing , though these are incidental to Don't Tell Alfred.
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The Mitford family is an aristocratic English family whose principal line had its seats at Mitford, Northumberland. Several heads of the family served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. A junior line, with seats at Newton Park, Northumberland, and Exbury House, Hampshire, descends via the historian William Mitford (1744–1827) and were twice elevated to the British peerage, in 1802 and 1902, under the title Baron Redesdale.
Nancy Freeman-Mitford was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies.
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The Pursuit of Love is a British romantic drama television miniseries written and directed by Emily Mortimer. It is based on the 1945 novel of the same name by Nancy Mitford, which had previously been adapted as Love in a Cold Climate (1980) and Love in a Cold Climate (2001). It premiered on 9 May 2021 on BBC One.
