Fanny Logan Rosamund Pike Fanny is based on Mitford's dear friend, Billa Harrod, who was everything Nancy wanted to be: sensible, down to earth, well adjusted, and happily married. Cousin of Linda and friend to Polly, Fanny is the story's narrator. According to actress Rosamund Pike, Fanny "changes a lot during the course of the story. We have the older Fanny, who is telling the story, and she is a lot wittier and has a deeper understanding of all that is going on than the younger one.... She may seem a bit of an outsider, but she is very much of that world, and she has great insight." Like several other members of the production, Pike found that her enjoyment of the novels, and indeed the script, was enhanced by knowing that many of the characters are based on real people. "When you know that, it suddenly becomes so much better, because you realize that it's not being done for comic effect. It's so cleverly observed, at turns dry and very finely pointed with such lovely asides.... It was a really exciting period of time. People were still recovering from the first world war when the second world war was looming. You can feel the storm clouds gathering." While Pike has appeared on television in ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's A Rather English Marriage and Wives and Daughters, Fanny is her first major role. Although born in London, Pike spent much of her childhood traveling with her parents, both of whom are opera singers. She began acting in the National Youth Theatre. In Mitford's words: Fanny Logan ...Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other's company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pin-pricks. Nannies, cooks, the endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one's brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden terrifying illnesses, Alfred's not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the whole-meal bread of life, rough, ordinary but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honey-dew, and that is an incomparable diet. The Pursuit of Love, Chapter 19