“Pigeon Pie” - Nancy Mitford

🐾 TL;DR: if you enjoy satire and WWII fiction, grab this book!

🐾 Key dates: 

• September 1939 UK declares war on Germany
• September 1940 Blitz begins
• The time period in between was known as the “Bore War” or “Phony War”.

🐾 Written in 1939, and published in 1940, it was horrendous timing for a satirical take on the absurd responses of former “Bright Young Things” to a war that as yet had not landed on British shores. By the time “Pigeon Pie” was published, the British were enduring the terrors of the Blitz and were in no fit mood to laugh at well-intentioned but dim Lady Sophia’s attempts to out-maneuver German spies to save her precious bulldog.

🐾 When Mitford wrote Sophia’s character, she included breezy references to “Huns” and “camps” - suggesting a population not yet aware of the extent of Nazi horrors. The post-war edition of PP is prefaced with an apology. As alluded to in “The Last Bookshop,” Mitford’s PP was widely considered to be in poor taste.

🐾 I enjoyed the satirical tone of PP but also the fact that it takes place entirely in the time period between 1939-1940. Mitford was capturing the mood of a nation contemporaneously. Britons were stoutly bracing themselves, but for what? Her compatriots were primed for a conflict on British soil, at any moment; eyes ever-strained for German parachutists, but growing weary of the calm while frenzied war efforts (i.e. Victory gardens, rationing, blackouts) were underway.

🐾 Knowing what we know, it is impossible to regard Nazi Germany with any level of nonchalance; but PP is a time capsule of public sentiment in 1939. Mitford’s satirical tone softens the sometimes sharp political observations of Lady Sophia.

🐾 Mitford happily skewers her own social set and herself. Lady Sophia could be a stand-in for Mitford. Other aristocratic ladies amuse themselves during the “Bore War” by inventing salacious spy adventures for themselves. Meanwhile both German and British propaganda proclaim an aging, flamboyant songbird as their secret weapon. All the while, aristocrats and politicians were ever-waffling in their positions between being fascinated by Hitler, or being convinced that the Prime Minister would broker a beneficial deal with Hitler, or wanting his head on a stake.

🐾 Lady Sophia is frivolous and wholly unaware of the average Briton’s pre-Blitz experience. She is languishing under a stupor because nothing seemed to be happening, though her quality of life is as yet unimpacted. Quite simply, she is a rich woman who is bored. She is eager for action … until she gets it in the form of Fifth Column operatives infesting her palatial residence.

🐾 While Mitford mercilessly skewers the aristocratic reaction to the Declaration of War, she also writes with foreboding that whatever may come, will change life dramatically, even for the wealthy and titled. I thoroughly enjoyed this snapshot into the time period immediately after the Declaration of War, that seems to garner the least literary attention.