2 Vanda Séréza; the Mitfords’ French governess.
3 An article for the New Statesman and Nation to mark the bicentenary of the French memoirist’s death. ’the Great Little Duke’ was reprinted in The Water Beetle (1962), a collection of Nancy’s journalism and essays.
4 Gladwyn Jebb (1900–96). Politician and diplomat who was ambassador to Paris 1954–60, and a friend of Nancy since before the war. Married Cynthia Noble in 1929. Created Baron Gladwyn in 1960.
5 Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986). Stalin’s loyal henchman who became Khrushchev’s Foreign Minister in 1953.
6 Joseph Pulitzer III (1913–93). Grandson of the founder of the Pulitzer Prize. Editor-publisher of the St Louis Post-Dispatch and chairman of the Pulitzer Publishing Company from 1955 until his death.
7 Mark Ogilvie-Grant (1905–69). A great friend and confidant of Nancy since 1925 who settled in Athens after the war.
1 Mary (Middy) O’Neill (1905–91). A friend of the Mitfords since childhood. Married Derick Gascoigne in 1934.
1 Deborah was considered one of the best women shots in the country
2 Tom Lord; head keeper at Chatsworth.
1 Deborah’s younger daughter was born on 18 March.
2 At the 1956 Grand National, the Queen Mother’s horse was leading by ten lengths when it collapsed just short of the winning post. The racing world rallied to sympathize and Lord Rosebery declared it the saddest thing that had happened in his lifetime.
1 Elsa Maxwell (1883–1963). The generously proportioned American hostess and gossip columnist.
2 The Marquess Douro is the courtesy title of the eldest son of the Duke of Wellington (who was annoyed when Deborah called her son Morny). The names ‘Sophia Louise Sydney’ were eventually chosen for Deborah’s daughter and the nickname ‘Sophy’ later adopted.
1 Mosley had a recurrence of phlebitis.
2 The Merseys moved back into their family home, Bignor Park, West Sussex, in 1959.
3 Art Buchwald wrote a spoof interview with Nancy in which he made her say, ‘I don’t like America or Americans. I’m getting old and only have a certain amount of time and I don’t want to waste a day in a place where I would be miserable.’New York Herald Tribune, 21 April 1957.
1 Jessica was planning another visit to England that summer.
2 Jessica had started to work on her first volume of memoirs, Hons and Rebels.
3 After the war, Diana began to suffer from recurrent migraines which afflicted her for many years, sometimes up to three or four times a week.
4 John Barbirolli (1899–1970). Conductor of the Manchester Hallé Orchestra 1943–58.
1 Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973). The Anglo-Irish novelist’s most recent book, A World of Love (1955), was set during an uncharacteristically hot Irish summer.
2 Edward Sackville-West (1901–65). Novelist and music critic who was the inspiration for Uncle Davey in Nancy’s novels. In 1957, he moved to Cooleville in Co. Tipperary.
3 Raymond Mortimer (1895–1980). Critic and literary editor of the New Statesman and Nation 1935–47. He became a close friend of Nancy in Paris after the war and was, with Evelyn Waugh, her chief literary mentor.
4 Voltaire in Love (1957).
5 Thomas Carlyle’s epic life of Frederick the Great of Prussia was published between 1858 and 1865.
1 Hardwick Hall, which had been in the Devonshire family for fifteen generations, and nine of Chatsworth’s most important works of art had been handed over to the government in lieu of death duties.
2 Lucian Freud (1922–). The artist painted six members of the Devonshire family, including a portrait of Deborah, completed in 1961.
3 John Betjeman (1906–84). The future Poet Laureate married Penelope Chetwode in 1933. When the marriage fell apart he formed an enduring relationship with Deborah’s sister-in-law Elizabeth (Deacon) Cavendish.
1 Cass Canfield Jr; editor at Harper & Row, later HarperCollins, and a director of the company for many years.
2 Sixteen-year-old Constancia was in Mexico City learning Spanish.
1 The house in Ireland the Mosleys bought after Clonfert burned down.
2 Giuditta Tommasi (d.1992). Daughter of a German-Swiss mother and Italian-Swiss father. An expert with horses, she moved to Ireland after the war where she became close to Pamela.
3 Rudolfine (Rudi) von Simolin (1918–79). Only daughter of a rich German industrialist and art collector. A friend of Unity in Munich, she visited her every day in hospital after her suicide attempt and packed up her Munich flat when she was sent home to England. After the war, Pamela accompanied Lady Redesdale to Germany to thank Rudi and they became lifelong friends. Married to Baron Lulu von Saint Paul in the late 1940s.
1 Deborah was using up old Chatsworth writing paper. The family did not move back into the house until 1959.
2 2 Jailhouse Rock (1957). Deborah’s early interest in Elvis Presley developed into a passion in later life.
3 Early seventeenth-century books relating to the Devonshires’ involvement in the Virginia Company.
4 As well as suffering from migraines, Diana had a bad back for which the doctor prescribed a support belt.
1 Deborah had been shooting at Blenheim Palace with the 10th Duke of Marlborough.
1 Deborah, who was taking one-year-old Sophia to Lismore for the first time, underlined the words that appear in italics and forwarded this letter to Diana.
2 Miss Feeney; the seamstress at Lismore. She was taught all she knew by Ann Astaire, mother of Fred, who lived at the castle during the war with her daughter, Adele, married to Andrew Devonshire’s uncle, Lord Charles Cavendish.
1 A restaurant in Eton High Street, dating back to 1420; a favourite with parents visiting their sons at Eton College.
1 Algernon (Tony) Pawson (1921–91). Ex-lover of the rich Chilean collector Arturo Lopez Wilshaw, Pawson was said to have the smallest waist in the army when he worked for British Intelligence during the war.
2 Antonio del Castillo (1908–84). Spanish dress designer who came to Paris in 1936 and worked for Paquin and Lanvin.
3 Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse, published by Julliard, was the bestseller of 1954.
1 Lord Redesdale died on 17 March 1958, four days after his eightieth birthday. Although he and Lady Redesdale had lived apart since the War, they never divorced and had continued to write to each other regularly.
2 Nancy’s biography Voltaire in Love.
3 Lord Redesdale, who had not seen Jessica since 1937, had cut her out of his will because of her attempt to give her share of Inch Kenneth to the Communist Party.
1 Oswald Mosley, Europe, Faith and Plan (1958).
2 The first Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons.
1 The Devonshires’ Yorkshire estate.
2 Major-General Robert Elliott Urquhart (1901–88). The commander of the 1st Airborne Division at the Battle of Arnhem had become an executive in the steel industry after leaving the army. Married to Pamela Condon in 1939. Their daughters were at school with Emma Cavendish.
3 Edith Sitwell (1887–1964). The poet had been named vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature earlier in the year.
4 The Queen Mother. Deborah adopted the nickname after attending a wedding where the Queen Mother, when told that the bride and groom were about to cut the cake, exclaimed ‘Oh, the cake!’ as though she had never seen it happen before. Deborah was lastingly impressed by her enthusiasm.
5 Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969). The writer was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
6 Robert Kee (1919–). The writer and broadcaster was a great friend of the Devonshires. Author of The Impossible Shore (1949), A Sign of the Times (1956) and Ireland, A History (1981).
7 A BBC radio programme, started in 1941 to answer listeners’ queries, which became one of the most popular programmes ever broadcast.
1 Lucian Freud had begun his portrait of Deborah.
2 Christian (Bébé) Bérard (1902–49). Painter and one of
France’s leading stage designers.
1 Lieutenant-Colonel John Silcock, the Devonshires’ land agent at Lismore for many years, and his wife Juliet.
2 Pamela had sold up at Tullamaine but was staying on in the house as a tenant.
3 Pamela’s local town, Fethard, was pronounced ‘Feathered’. Feathered World, to which Pamela subscribed, was the poultry and pigeon fanciers’ magazine.
1 Jacob Epstein (1880–1959). Deborah had commissioned a bust of her daughter Sophia from the sculptor. It was his penultimate work.
1 Jessica’s memoirs were published in England by Victor Gollancz as Hons and Rebels and in America by Houghton Mifflin as Daughters and Rebels (1960).
1 In Many Rhythms, a volume of memoirs by Irene Ravensdale, older sister of Cynthia, Mosley’s first wife, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953. Mosley had sued to get the book withdrawn on the grounds of libel.
1 Jessica had offered to buy out her sisters’ shares in Inch Kenneth and keep the island so that Lady Redesdale could continue living there.
2 Duncan Grant (1885–1978). The Bloomsbury painter was an old friend of Violet Hammersley and a frequent guest of the Devonshires.
3 Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood (1897–1965). Only daughter of King George V. She shared Andrew and Deborah’s interest in horse-racing.
1 Lady Pamela Smith (1914–82). Political hostess and friend of Nancy during the 1950s. Married, in 1936, Michael Berry (created Baron Hartwell 1968), proprietor of the Daily Telegraph.
2 Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971). Premier of the Soviet Union 1958–64.
3 Murdo, whose name Nancy gaelicized, was the man-of-all work at Inch Kenneth.
1 Deborah was, briefly, Honorary Colonel of the 307 (Northern Command) Women’s Royal Army Corps.
2 The flamboyant American pianist had brought a libel suit against the Daily Mail for describing him as ‘an appalling man’, ’the summit of sex-Masculine, Feminine and Neuter’.
3 The Auxiliary Territorial Service was the women’s branch of the British Army during the Second World War.
4 Sophia’s nanny.
5 Nancy’s novel had been made into Count Your Blessings (1959), starring Maurice Chevalier.
6 An adjective often used by Pamela, who pronounced it as in ‘fowl’, which was taken up by all her sisters.
1 Jessica had been staying with Nancy in Paris and had left a receipt for photographs that were being developed.
2 Nancy’s Cyrillic approximation of ‘Nancy Rodd’.
1 John Rothenstein (1901–92). Director of the Tate Gallery 1938–64.
2 Anthony Eden (1897–1977). The Conservative statesman had resigned as Prime Minister two years previously. He married Winston Churchill’s niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, in 1952.
1 Hardy Amies (1909–2003). Dressmaker to the Queen.
2 The Farnese Palace in Rome where Palewski had been French ambassador since 1957 and which he was busy restoring.
3 Nancy used to tease Deborah that she had a deformed thumb from sucking it as a child.
4 Deborah spent August shooting grouse at Bolton Abbey.
5 Lady Redesdale was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
1 Anna Maria Cicogna (1913–2004). A Venetian friend of Nancy with whom she often stayed during the summer months and to whom she dedicated Don’t Tell Alfred (1960).
1 The Conservatives had been returned to power in the general election with an increased majority.
2 Ingrid Wyndham (1931–). Diana’s daughter-in-law. Married to Jonathan Guinness 1951–63, and to Paul Channon in 1963.
3 Mosley had estimated that he would get one-third of the votes; in the event he received just 8 per cent.
1 William Walton (1902–83). The composer had been taken to Chatsworth by Osbert Sitwell.
2 The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox (1959). Evelyn Waugh’s biography of the Catholic convert, scholar and writer.
3 Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (1894–1986). Conservative Prime Minister 1957–63. Married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, Andrew Devonshire’s aunt, in 1920.
4 Gary Cooper (1901–61). The American actor appeared in four films in 1959: The Hanging Tree, They Came to Cordura, Alias Jesse James and The Wreck of the Mary Deare.
1 Nancy’s last novel, Don’t Tell Alfred.
Plates
Lord Redesdale with his dogs. Asthall, 1922.
The ‘Bouds’, Unity and Jessica, c.1920.
The ‘Hens’, Deborah and Jessica. Asthall, 1923.
The Mitfords with their Churchill cousins; (back) Diana Mitford, Diana Churchill, Lady Redesdale, Pamela, Tom; (front) Randolph Churchill, Deborah, Unity, Jessica, Sarah Churchill, c.1924.
Pamela’s ‘coming out’ dance at Asthall, 20 November 1925. (back) Pamela, second from left; Nancy, fourth from left in a mantilla; Lady Redesdale, third from right. Lord Redesdale’s brother Jack is sitting in the front on the far right.
Nancy, aged twenty-two, soon after her hair had been shingled. ‘No one would look at you twice now’, warned her mother.
Diana in 1928, the year she turned eighteen and became engaged to Bryan Guinness.
Pamela and Oliver (Togo) Watney in 1928. Their short engagement was broken off by mutual consent.
Deborah, Lady Redesdale, Lord Redesdale, Diana, Tom and Jessica, 1930.
Nurse Brendan holding Desmond Guinness at his christening, with Diana, Jonathan and Bryan at St.Margaret‘s, Westminster, 1931.
Diana with Jonathan and Desmond at Eaton Square, under their portrait by Pavel Tchelitchew, 1935.
Unity in 1932, the year before she left for Germany.
Pamela, 1926.
Sixteen-year-old Jessica with her spaniel, Tray.
Deborah, aged fourteen, collecting chickens’ eggs – a lifelong enthusiasm.
Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity and Pamela, 1935.
Nancy at her wedding to Peter Rodd, 4 December 1933.
Nancy and Peter outside Rose Cottage, 1934; the strains in their marriage are already beginning to show.
Pamela and Derek on their wedding day. Caxton Hall, 29 December 1936. Unusually for a bride, Pamela wore black.
Derek and Pamela sailing with Putzi Hanfstaengl on the Starnberger See, 1936.
A keen fencer, Oswald Mosley had represented Britain in international, championships.
Diana and Unity on their first visit to Germany, with Putzi Hanfstaengl at the Bratwurstglöcklein restaurant, Nuremberg, 1933.
Diana and Unity giving the Nazi salute.
A page from Unity’s album showing her dressed for the Munich Fasching with Brian Howard, 1935.
Unity at the Hesselberg meeting, 23 June 1935.
Hitler, Unity and SA Obergruppenführer Franz von Pfeffer. Bayreuth, 1936.
Unity with her SS boyfriend, Erich Widmann, outside the Osteria Bavaria restaurant where she first met Hitler.Munich, 1935.
Jessica in 1936, the year before she eloped.
Jessica and Esmond in Bayonne, 1937.
Deborah, an eighteen-year-old debutante in 1938, the year she fell in love with Andrew Cavendish.
Deborah in a wedding dress made by Victor Stiebel. ‘Masses & masses & masses of white tulle, tight bodice & sleeves, a skirt such as has never been seen before for size’. 19 April, 1941.
Tom Mitford, late 1930s.
Unity, Lady Redesdale, Jonathan and Desmond Guinness. The Mill Cottage, Swinbrook, 1940.
Pamela holding eighteenmonth-old Alexander Mosley, with two of her adored long-haired dachshunds in the background. Rignell, 1940.
Gaston Palewski, the ‘Colonel’, the love of Nancy’s life, in his flat in the rue Bonaparte, Paris, c.1945.
Nancy in Christian Dior, on the steps of rue Monsieur, 1952.
Pamela, Deborah and Derek Jackson. Rignell, c.1946.
Pamela with her companion, Giuditta Tommasi, and Jessica, 1950s.
Lady Redesdale aboard Puffin, Inch Kenneth, 1947. The grief at losing her only son and the strain of caring for
brain-damaged Unity is etched on her face. (Photograph by Julia Budworth)
Diana, after her release from prison.
Alexander, Oswald, Diana and Max Mosley, reunited at Crowood after wartime separation.
Temple de la Gloire, Orsay, the Mosleys’ house near Paris.
Diana on the Lido, Venice, 1955.
Jessica with Benjamin, Nicholas and Constancia, 1948.
(back) Evelyn Louise Crawford, Constancia Romilly, Emma Cavendish, Peregrine Hartington; (front) Lady Redesdale, Robert Treuhaft, Jessica. Inch Kenneth, 1955.
Deborah painted by Mogens Tvede. Edensor House, 1949.
Deborah at the Beistegui Ball, in a dress copied from a John Downman watercolour of Georgiana, wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire. Venice, 1951.
Deborah in coronation robes with nine-year-old Peregrine, who was page to Mary, Duchess of Devonshire, Mistress of the Robes to the Queen, 1953.
Deborah parading at the Royal Show, Britain’s largest agricultural fair, with ‘the Wife’, her great friend Lady Mersey, 1950s.
Deborah’s elder sister-in-law, Anne Cavendish (Tig), at her wedding to Michael Tree, 1949.
Deborah’s daughter Sophia, aged three.
Deborah’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Cavendish (Deacon) with her companion, the future poet laureate John Betjeman, at Lismore Castle, 1958.
Violet Hammersley, ‘the Widow’. Chatsworth, 1960.
President Kennedy leaving Edensor churchyard after visiting his sister Kathleen’s grave, June 1963.
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