Part family saga, part half-hearted guilt-memoir - what really gives this book its fascination is the setting of the story amongst adherents of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1938.

So much WW2 historical fiction shows us characters nobly and wholeheartedly disgusted by Nazis - the reality, of course, was never that clear-cut and thus the real interest of Connolly's novel is bringing that shameful ambivalence back onto the table. It's perhaps no coincidence that the British fascists in the novel are also anti-Semitic, do not see Britain as part of Europe, are against the League of Nations, cling to a conservatism which despises 'foreigners' and non-Tories, and believes in the rectitude of the British Empire - shades of Brexit, anyone?

There are places where Connolly could be more incisive: there's much to-do about minor things (the 'event' at the party, for example, just doesn't have the significance that the blurb promises) but I like that she doesn't overstate. For example, she resists introducing either Mosley himself directly into the story or Diana and Mitfordiana - and the book is better for that restraint.

So certainly not a faultless novel but an important reintroduction to fiction of Britain's flirtation with fascism in the run-up to WW2.