Briefly, then, for that reader: teenage Linda Radlett lives in “the very definition of emptiness” (north Norfolk).

By making Mr Radlett a working-class rock star rather than moneyed aristocrat, Knight gives herself the opportunity to rib the upper classes through his frequently irate, defiantly egotistical lens. She was determined to escape the ordinariness of life, so she went to Paris, met some eccentric people, married some of them, and lived her life to the fullest. The latest, much-anticipated addition to the Mitford shelves is journalist India Knight’s Darling, a modern re-telling of The Pursuit of Love. It's beautifully and meticulously done, echoing the detail of the original plot as far as feasible, but with contemporary twists .In the author’s reimagining, Linda and her siblings grow up as “utter freaks” on the sprawling Alconleigh farm in north Norfolk. Sharp, topical, and powerful, Hyper is a story about what remains of our humanity in a world increasingly dominated by the flows of capital. The neighborhood looks different too, but she’s still the same woman and it’s still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide. There is something discombobulating about characters you know being almost but not quite themselves. But Darling is a treat, with whip-smart dialogue, larger-than- life characters, witty observations and a heart-breaking twist .

Even so, this is a gorgeously bittersweet portrait of growing up, where happiness is only ever fleeting. Although Linda believes she wants to be free from the family confines, really she only dreams of romance and marriage. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual.The daughter of a former rock ‘n roll hell-raiser and the mellow woman who tamed him, Linda grew up in blissful seclusion from the wider world in a sprawling estate in the Surrey countryside alongside her rabble of siblings and favourite cousin, Fran. Tony Kroesig is the son of a UKIP-supporting Lord Bamford type, and Christian Talbot is a self-obsessed OE minor novelist with a fine line in poverty tourism. I'm glad that I read the original text that this retelling is taken from so that I had that knowledge of the storyline and could appreciate the masterful way that India Knight has revamped the story but kept the heart of the characters the same.

Her updates are so so clever - Uncle Matthew is a cantankerous retired rock star living in rural Norfolk with bad wifi and little phone signal, and Auntie Sadie is posh Anglo-Indian boho, while Lord Merlin is now a sort of combination of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano (the doves dyed pastel colours totally fit! Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).This book was apparently a retelling of ‘The Pursuit of Love’, which I hadn’t read and didn’t even know about when picking this up. Darling is also in that vein, that serves a heightened sense of reality in a decidedly upper-middle-class world, where worries are real but they are less where the money for the mortgage is going to come from and more will they be able to afford a junior suite at the Ritz in Paris, or will it have to be a mere double room.