Mitford family drama is full of 'fun, fashion and froth'

It is based on Mary S. Lovell's biography of the Mitford family, but this new drama "could easily be mistaken for a work of fiction", said Megan Bull in the Radio Times. The aristocratic Mitford sisters (Nancy, Diana, Decca, Pamela, Deborah and Unity) were almost implausibly "outrageous", and their antics – political and romantic – enthralled the public in the 1930s.

Narrated by Nancy (Bessie Carter), the series traces the family's fortunes from the Wall Street crash to the eve of the Second World War, by which point Diana (Joanna Vanderham) had eloped with Oswald Mosley, while Unity (Shannon Watson) had become a devotee of Adolf Hitler. The series is full of "fun, fashion and froth", but it also poses a serious question: "Could you stand by your family, no matter what?"

It's pretty watchable, said Ben Dowell in The Times. Through Nancy's eyes, we observe the sisters' "absurdities", while getting a sense of the "warmth and love" that existed between them. And while we're not expected to sympathise with Diana or Unity, we do get insights into what drew them to fascism.

I'm afraid I found it "cartoony", said Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman. The acting is deft, and if you like looking at clothes and country houses, you'll find it a feast. But it all flies by so fast, context is lost, and neither Nancy's cleverness, nor Decca's turn to communism, are properly explored. If you're interested in the Mitfords, you won't need this primer; if you're not, you may just be baffled by this soapish confection.

by James Bloodworth 

With the "crisis of masculinity" much in the news, the publication of this book could hardly be more timely, said Thomas Peermohamed Lambert in The Sunday Times.

In it, James Bloodworth, previously the author of an undercover study of the gig economy, sets out on a "personal journey through the manosphere", aimed at understanding why so many young men are "disappearing into a swamp of video games, pornography, fast food and despair". To this end, he interviews "leading lights" of the movement – a "veritable rogues' gallery of cranks and hucksters", many of whom are raking in vast sums by cynically inflaming masculine discontent.

In London, he meets Derek Moneyberg, creator of a guide for "aspiring high-value males". In Dubai, he meets the "dating guru" Michael Sartain, who claims men will attract more female attention online if they make themselves look like "a scumbag". While Bloodworth doesn't quite get to the bottom of "what is causing this global efflorescence of misogyny", he certainly "evokes it as well as anyone". His book, apart from anything else, is an "impressive feat of research".

In an "excellent" first chapter, Bloodworth recalls how, as a "callow 23-year-old", he "forked out a couple of grand to take a course in seduction", said Thomas W. Hodgkinson in The Guardian. "This was the era of Neil Strauss's 2005 bestseller 'The Game'" – and Bloodworth charts how that "noughties pickup culture gave rise to the manosphere proper, as men who absorbed the lessons of Strauss's book found they still weren't having any luck, and got angry about it".

"Lost Boys" becomes "more generic" as it progresses – largely because the material gets less personal – but it is "sobering all the same". We learn about groups such as the Red Pill brigade, who claim the world is secretly run by women, and the toxic influencer Andrew Tate, who by 2023 was more recognisable to teenage boys than Britain's then PM Rishi Sunak.

Bloodworth also helpfully busts some of the manosphere's "pernicious myths", said Richard Reeves in Literary Review. These include the false claim that women often wrongly accuse men of sexual assault, and the idea – common among incels or involuntary celibates – that a "minority of men are getting all the women".

Occasionally, Bloodworth "goes astray" with his facts – as when, in a discussion of rates of male violence against women, he "omits to mention that these have been trending downwards". But overall, this is a "vivid" and absorbing look at one of contemporary society's most disturbing trends.

Bestselling thriller writer and former courier for MI6

Frederick Forsyth, who has died aged 86, wrote a series of bestselling spy thrillers, many of which drew on his own life. A former fighter pilot, he worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris during the de Gaulle years, and in the 1960s, he travelled to Nigeria to cover the brutal civil war in Biafra. There, he claimed to have been recruited as an informant for British secret services. He worked as a courier for MI6 and was nearly caught by the KGB while fetching a package from a Russian mole in East Germany. He would imply that writing, compared to this, was quite dull. He said he had only "bashed out" his first novel, 1971's "The Day of the Jackal", because he was out of work and needed to make some money.

Born in Ashford, Kent, in 1938, he was the son of two shopkeepers, Frederick and Phyllis, who sold furs and dresses. At Tonbridge School, he excelled at languages – he was fluent in French, German, Spanish and Russian – but had no interest in academics. His father's advice, he recalled, was that if you want "an interesting life, bloody well go out and get one" so, "I did". Having left school at 16, he trained to be a bullfighter in Spain and joined the RAF. Flying Vampire jets, he was the youngest pilot in the service, but when he wasn't posted to a front-line squadron, he resigned to seek excitement by other means. He started work on a local paper in 1958; then, thanks to his languages, he got a job with Reuters in Paris – where a group of right-wing ex-army men angered by Charles de Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria were believed to be plotting to kill the president.

From Paris, he was sent to Berlin, where he reported on the Wall going up. In Biafra for the BBC, he detested the way he was expected to accept Foreign Office briefs on the war: in his reporting, he put the secessionist's side, and drew attention to the conflict's devastating impact on the civilian population. When his bosses objected, he went freelance. Back in London, his career was in pieces – so he wrote his first novel, a political thriller about a hired assassin preparing to kill de Gaulle. Publishers were sceptical about "The Day of the Jackal"; since de Gaulle had not been assassinated, they were not convinced readers would buy in to the plot. But it proved an instant bestseller. He followed it up with "The Odessa File" (1972), a tale of a reporter's quest to find a notorious ex-Nazi who is being protected by a shadowy group of former SS men; and "The Dogs of War" (1974), which was reportedly inspired by his experience of backing a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. All three were turned into films.

In the mid-1970s, he and his first wife Carole Cunningham moved with their sons to Ireland, for tax reasons; they returned in 1980, when the Tories were back in power. Latterly, Forsyth had become known as a political pundit, expressing right-wing, pro-Brexit views. His politics were one thing that set him apart from his fellow spy writer John le Carré; another was his lack of any pretension to be a literary novelist; a third was his loyalty to his wives. His work had been "harum-scarum" and sometimes risky, he said; in his domestic life, he was "conventional", monogamous. He and Carole divorced amicably in 1988. His second wife, Sandy Molloy, whose primary carer he had become, died last year.