Try free for 30 days
-
The Pursuit of Love
- Narrated by: Bessie Carter
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Hons and Rebels
- By: Jessica Mitford
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, lighthearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.
-
-
Too wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 04-01-2022
-
Darling
- By: India Knight
- Narrated by: Sophie Winkleman
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marooned in a sprawling farmhouse in Norfolk, teenage Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things. She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Rob on 13-04-2024
-
Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters
- By: Laura Thompson
- Narrated by: Maggie Mash
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They were known as the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege in the early years of the 20th century, they became prominent as 'bright young things' in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark - and very public - differences in their outlooks came to symbolize the political polarities of a dangerous decade.
-
-
A fascinating book
- By Vanessa Young on 08-11-2016
-
Cold Comfort Farm
- Penguin Classics
- By: Stella Gibbons
- Narrated by: Pearl Mackie
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.
-
Nancy Mitford: Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate & More
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Drama Collection
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: full cast, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two best sellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress, and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life.
-
The Blessing
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.
-
Hons and Rebels
- By: Jessica Mitford
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, lighthearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.
-
-
Too wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 04-01-2022
-
Darling
- By: India Knight
- Narrated by: Sophie Winkleman
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marooned in a sprawling farmhouse in Norfolk, teenage Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things. She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Rob on 13-04-2024
-
Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters
- By: Laura Thompson
- Narrated by: Maggie Mash
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They were known as the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege in the early years of the 20th century, they became prominent as 'bright young things' in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark - and very public - differences in their outlooks came to symbolize the political polarities of a dangerous decade.
-
-
A fascinating book
- By Vanessa Young on 08-11-2016
-
Cold Comfort Farm
- Penguin Classics
- By: Stella Gibbons
- Narrated by: Pearl Mackie
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.
-
Nancy Mitford: Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate & More
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Drama Collection
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: full cast, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two best sellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress, and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life.
-
The Blessing
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.
-
Pigeon Pie
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results. One of Mitford's earliest novels and written before Christmas 1939, Pigeon Pie is delivered with a touch lighter than that of her later masterpieces but no less entertaining. This comedy combines glamour, wit and a fiendishly absurd plot into an irresistible literary confection.
-
The Beautiful Visit
- By: Elizabeth Jane Howard
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of an unusual voyage, a young woman reviews her life. Her story begins with a 'beautiful visit' to friends in the country which serves as an awakening experience. What follows is an account of her struggle to retain the mood of her visit.
-
-
A Beautiful Story
- By Anna Spencer on 12-01-2017
-
The Light Years
- Cazalet Chronicle, Volume 1
- By: Elizabeth Jane Howard
- Narrated by: Jill Balcon
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tangled lives of three generations evoke a vanished world in this, the first volume of the Cazalet Chronicle. Home Place, Sussex, 1937. The English family at home.... For two unforgettable summers they gathered together, safe from the advancing storm clouds of war. In the heart of the Sussex countryside these were still sunlit days of childish games, lavish family meals and picnics on the beach.
-
-
On to the second instalment
- By Sunny on 23-11-2023
-
Mrs. Dalloway
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
-
-
Had to read for English Class
- By Connor on 08-03-2015
-
Some Tame Gazelle
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates. They were so immature and always made the same kind of conversation. Now the Archdeacon was altogether different...'Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that elderly Italian Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year.
-
-
An early novel by the highly gifted Barbara Pym
- By Edmund Doogue on 24-06-2020
-
Tom Lake
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
A sublime performance by the remarkable Streep. I was desperate for this never to finish. Please share another on Audible soon.
- By Christine Rowlands on 16-08-2023
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.
-
-
a true classic read by a veteran performer
- By Patrick on 19-08-2017
-
A Glass of Blessings
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking, and fairly young - but very bored. Her husband Rodney, a handsome army major, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less. Her interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-Catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the more serious-minded company of three unmarried priests and Piers Longridge, a man of a different character altogether.
-
-
Boring!
- By Anonymous User on 30-04-2023
-
Jane and Prudence
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Maggie Mash
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The setting of this very funny novel, one of Barbara Pym's earliest, is an English village where Jane's husband is the newly appointed vicar, and where Prudence will pay Jane a visit and find herself courted by a fatuous young widower.
-
-
Terrible narration spoiled the book
- By Anna M on 05-03-2018
-
The Bolter
- By: Frances Osborne
- Narrated by: Rosamund Pike
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge's Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man.
-
Excellent Women
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble, Gerry Halligan
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sales, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather'. As such, she often gets herself embroiled in other people's lives - especially those of her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, whose marriage seems to be on the rocks.
-
-
Loved it, funny and gentle
- By KitBallou on 07-06-2023
-
Wigs on the Green
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: John Heffernan
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugenia Malmains is one of the richest girls in England and an ardent supporter of Captain Jack and the Union Jackshirts. Noel and Jasper are both in search of an heiress (so much easier than trying to work for the money). Poppy and Marjorie are nursing lovelorn hearts, and the beautiful bourgeois Mrs Lace is on the prowl for someone near Eugenia's fabulous country home at Chalford, and much farce ensues.
Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
One of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written, Nancy Mitford's classic is now major a BBC and Prime Video series directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James, Andrew Scott and Dominic West.
'He was the great love of her life you know.'
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.'
Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover.
But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris.
Nancy Mitford's wickedly funny series continues in Love in a Cold Climate and Don't Tell Alfred.
Critic Reviews
"Utter, utter bliss." (Daily Mail)
"A pleasure as intense as inheriting a perfect pearl necklace, or finding a silk dress in a vintage shop that fits like a glove." (Caitlin Moran, Harper's Bazaar)
"Peerless." (Zoe Heller)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Pursuit of Love
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 29-01-2023
Delightful
Wonderful narrator and of course a delightful tale, makes you smile at the absurdity of life
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jennifer B
- 17-07-2022
Magic
I think this is a wonderful story, perfect beginning for Love in a Cold Climate. Thank you, Nancy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- S Langford
- 16-08-2021
Boring doesn’t even begin to describe
Despite being a profoundly boring storyline, i soldiered on through this book to the end.
I cannot think why the author ever thought that the lives of the ruling classes were of interest enough to put pen to paper. There is no plot to this rambling rubbish - there are merely aimless, bland characters whom have no depth or purpose in constructing a plot.
Linda, a main character, died and i could not have cared less - not a tear was shed. I couldn’t connect to any of the characters on any level because they were one dimensional.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!