The Pursuit of Laughter give us a little of her wit. The Pursuit of Laughter does neither and thus the Diana who emerges from its pages is, unforgivably, nothing more than a snobbish dullard with a startling line in rhetorical leaps." Acknowledgements (466) Index (467) The Pursuit of Laughter The Pursuit of Laughter is a 2008 collection of diaries, articles, reviews and portraits by Diana Mitford. The book was published by Gibson Square and edited by Martin Rynja. Mitford's sister, Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, provides the introduction. The title is a homage to another Mitford sister's book, Nancy Mitford's "The Pursuit of Love".
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters scalding wit and best selling novelist; Pamela, who craved a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed during the Second World War; Unity, whose obsession with Hitler led to her demise, Jessica, the runaway communist; and Deborah, the socialite who became Duchess of Devonshire. The book was well received both critically and commercially. In particular previously held perceptions were challenged. India Knight wrote in the "Sunday Times"; "we didn’t really know them especially well, it turns out. Jessica was not that good; Diana briefly sinister but also clever, kind, fatally loyal to her Blackshirt husband, Oswald Mosley, and so on."