1 ‘I still loved Boud for her huge, glittering personality, for her rare brand of eccentricity, for a kind of loyalty to me which she preserved in spite of our now very real differences of outlook.’ Hons and Rebels, p. 63.
1 While her sisters’ immediate assumption that Jessica had taken the scrapbook seems gratuitously unfair, and while they were no doubt ready to seize on any pretext to try to prove that she had closely cooperated with Pryce-Jones, Jessica’s somewhat casual approach to other people’s property gave them reason to believe that she could have taken it. In 1959, when Mosley was standing for Parliament, Jessica had written to a friend regretting that she could find no photographs of Mosley with Hitler or Mussolini, in order ‘just to remind people’, and added, only half-jokingly, ‘I guess that leaves it up to us to steam some out of Muv’s scrapbooks at the Island; I do hope she won’t notice.’ Decca, p. 207.
1 Harold Acton’s memoir of Nancy was dedicated to ‘Diana, Debo and Pam, with love and gratitude’
2 A Fine Old Conflict.
3 The Los Angeles Forest Lawn Memorial Park that inspired Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Loved One.
4 ‘I’ll be seein’ yer’.
1 In May 1935, Mosley had sent a telegram to Streicher’s newspaper Der Stürmer saying, ‘The power of Jewish corruption must be destroyed in all countries before peace and justice can be successfully achieved in Europe.’ Robert Skidelsky had not included the letter in his biography of Mosley.
1 Producer of The Honourable Rebel, the BBC documentary about Jessica.
2 Frances (Sally) Smith; American-born wife of Philip Toynbee whom she married in 1950.
1 See Nancy to Jessica, 21 September 1939, p. 151.
1 Joan Mitford (1887–1977). Lord Redesdale’s younger sister. Married Denis Farrer in 1907.
1 Viscount Lambton (1922–2007). Conservative MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Defence 1970–73. He resigned after being involved in a call-girl scandal.
2 To tie in with the publication of A Life of Contrasts, Diana had been interviewed on The Russell Harty Show. Deborah was unable to watch the interview because it was broadcast in London only, but Lord Lambton saw it and telephoned her afterwards.
1 A Fine Old Conflict.
2 Jessica wrote of Unity, ‘She was immensely bold, generous and funny in a sort of sui generis way that is very difficult to describe to anybody who didn’t know her in those days,’ p. 25.
3 The two writers had been sparring partners for many years.
1 The Queen’s Silver Jubilee, which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of her accession to the throne, was celebrated with parties and parades throughout Britain.
2 The barn where Pamela kept her chickens.
1 A phrase used by Pamela to describe anything good, derived from her affection for her long-haired dachshund.
2 Deborah had opened a farm shop at Chatsworth.
1 Deborah planned to reprint the handbook to Chatsworth compiled by the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858) and supplement it with notes and photographs of the work that she and Andrew had done to the house. It was published in 1982 as The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth.
2 Deborah was breeding Haflingers, small, sturdy horses imported from the South Tyrol.
3 Diana’s son Desmond Guinness had lived in Ireland since his marriage in 1954. Although they had often seen each other in France or England, Diana had not visited Desmond since the sale of Ileclash in 1963.
4 Celebrations for Pamela’s seventieth birthday.
1 Jessica had dined with the Devonshires and felt that she had been invited in order to produce ‘absolute proof’ that she had stolen the scrapbook.
1 The cottage once lived in by the Swinbrook postmistress and keeper of the village shop.
2 The Lodge was the largest house in Swinbrook village.
1 A Fine Old Conflict
1 Diana had translated racing driver Niki Lauda’s autobiography, For the Record, published by William Kimber.
2 A friend of Nancy and Diana who typed several of their books.
3 Roger Dean (1944–). Artist celebrated for his record-album covers and futuristic designs. Views, a compilation of his work, was published by Dragon’s Dream in 1975.
4 Gladys Deacon (1881–1977). American beauty who married the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1921. After her death, a sale at Christie’s of her jewellery and works of art fetched nearly £800,000.
5 Daphne Vivian (1904–97). Married to Viscount Weymouth (later 6th Marquess of Bath) 1927–53 and to Alexander (Xan) Fielding 1953–78.
1 ‘Yes, I know, but she could still have just mentioned me.’
2 An eight-part ITV adaptation by Simon Raven of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.
3 Pope John Paul I had died on 28 September 1978.
1 The son of Diana’s gardener, Maurice Pasquier.
1 William Abrahams (1919–98). The former poet and novelist was a friend of Jessica and her editor for The American Way of Birth (1992).
1 Deborah’s younger daughter, Sophia, was marrying Anthony Murphy, who starred in the 1971 television series Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
2 Collie and Beetle were Deborah and Pamela’s dogs. In June 1979, the former leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, had been acquitted of attempting to murder Norman Scott with whom he was alleged to have had a homosexual affair.
3 Benjamin Treuhaft had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
1 It Was Such Fun (1935).
2 Cecil Beaton had died on 17 January.
1 Jessica had made it a condition of participating in Nancy Mitford, A Portrait by her Sisters, a TV documentary by Julian Jebb, that she be allowed to read out Nancy’s letter to her of 15 November 1968 (see p. 521), in which Nancy objected to Mosley saying that Tom Mitford had been a fascist and in which she claimed that Tom had hated Mosley.
1 Bertram, 2nd Baron Denham (1927–). The Mitfords’ first cousin married Jean McCorquodale in 1956.
1 Brownie, a very small pony bought by Lord Redesdale in 1908, travelled in the train carriage while the infant Pamela was placed in a luggage rack.
2 Palewski meant to say that Nancy was witty, ‘spirituel’ in French.
1 Constancia married Terry Weber later in the month.
1 The Duchess of Windsor (1980).
2 Margaret Willes; editor at Sidgwick & Jackson.
3 Andrew Devonshire’s grandmother, who was Queen Mary’s Mistress of the Robes, used to pass on information to her about the future Duke of Windsor’s visits to nightclubs when he was a young man.
4 Walter Annenberg (1908–2002). Publishing billionaire. US ambassador to London 1969–74.
1 In Julian Jebb’s article, Jessica was quoted as saying that she had tried to give her share of Inch Kenneth to the Communist Party in 1958 after discovering that she had been cut out of her father’s will. In fact, she had unsuccessfully tried to give it to the Party after Tom’s death in 1946.
1 A nurse who looked after Nancy in the Nuffield Hospital.
2 Snowdon’s close-up portrait of Diana.
3 Diana and Deborah were photographed wearing white, high-necked blouses.
1 As the wife of a baronet, Diana’s correct title was ‘Lady Mosley’.
2 The housekeeper at Chatsworth.
3 Henry Coleman; the butler at Chatsworth.
1 The Duke of Windsor.
2 Diana’s London home when she was first married to Bryan Guinness.
3 The ‘Treasures of Chatsworth’ exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in October 1980.
4 In the Spectator, Alastair Forbes had compared the Duchess of Windsor unfavourably with the Queen Mother. (2 August 1980)
5 Jean-Pierre Béraud (1956–96). A young Parisian chef, found by Diana, who had gone to work at Chatsworth.
1 Lady Selina Hastings (1945–). Journalist and biographer whose life of Nancy was published in 1985.
1 Ian Curteis (1935–). Television writer who was planning to make a film about the Mitfords. T
he project never materialized.
2 Diana was attacked by Christopher Hitchens in the New Statesman for saying in a Books & Bookmen review that Dr Goebbels was ‘clever and witty’ and his wife ‘charming and beautiful’. The publisher of Books & Bookmen, Philip Dossé (1926–80), had committed suicide because his company was bankrupt.
3 The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Mark Amory (1980).
4 Lady Mary (Maimie) Lygon (1910–82). A friend of Waugh since 1931 and a lifelong correspondent.
1 Jay Presson Allen (1922–2006). Playwright and Hollywood producer who was planning to make a film of Hons and Rebels and who told Jessica that she thought Deborah had ‘introduced a welcome note of sanity in the general welter of eccentricity’ into Jebb’s documentary. (Jessica to Deborah, 7 November 1980).
2 William Abrahams.
1 The novel by Edith Somerville and Martin Ross was first published in 1894.
2 Ned Sherrin (1931–2007). The writer and producer was working with Caryl Brahms on The Mitford Girls, a musical which opened at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1981.
1 Jessica had written to Deborah expressing concern about Ian Curteis’s film and annoyance that she had not been consulted.
1 Bernie Ecclestone (1930–). Formula One racing supremo.
2 The thirteen part TV series Civilisation, broadcast in 1969, had made Kenneth Clark a household name.
1 A Miss Perkin, who purported to have been the Mitfords’ governess, claimed that eleven-year-old Unity had ‘made her life a lasting misery’.
1 Selina Hastings had asked Gaston Palewski why he thought Nancy’s handwriting had changed after meeting him. ‘Shall I show you?’ he replied, making a pass at her. On another occasion, he had asked Cristiana Brandolini to hold up a painting and had then pounced.
2 A biography by Philip Ziegler (1981).
1 Diana had been staying with Max and Jean Mosley in the South of France.
2 Charlotte Marten (1952–). The editor of these letters married Alexander Mosley in 1975.
3 Max and Jean’s sons, Alexander (1970–) and Patrick (1972–).
4 These were the first symptoms of a brain tumour, initially diagnosed as a stroke. Diana was operated on and made a complete recovery
1 Sidney Watkins (1923–). Professor of neurosurgery and medical adviser to Formula One 1978–2004.
1 Diana was going at Chatsworth to convalesce after her operation.
1 Diana’s stepson, Nicholas Mosley, was working on the first volume of his biography Rules of the Game: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley 1896–1933 (1982).
2 The curtains in Diana’s bedroom at Chatsworth were made of Chinese silk, bought in Moscow and smuggled through the market of Nijni Novgorod for the 6th Duke of Devonshire.
3 Michael Swash; professor of neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital where Diana was operated on.
1 Deborah was redecorating the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey, a two-hour drive from Chatsworth.
2 Deborah’s editor at Macmillan.
1 Diana had sold a writing desk and found a pile of old letters in one of its drawers.
2 J. F. C. (Boney) Fuller (1878–1966). Military strategist and historian.
1 Bizet, La Tragédie de Carmen, directed by Peter Brook at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris.
1 The 1st Baron Redesdale published an expurgated record of his posting in China, The Attaché in Peking, in 1900.
2 In 1972, Deborah bought from a dealer two volumes of a diary she had kept in 1938. The books had been forgotten in a crate in the Mosleys’ London house after they left.
3 Jonathan and Catherine Guinness’s biography The House of Mitford, was published in 1984.
1 Deborah had written an article in the Los Angeles monthly TV guide to coincide with the American broadcast of Julian Jebb’s documentary on Nancy
1 ‘Horribly’ in Honnish.
2 Michael Baigent et al., The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1983). The book claimed that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, fathered a child and staged his own crucifixion.
* Do you want them for your collection?
1 Emma Tennant, Deborah’s daughter, and her sister-in-law, the novelist Emma Tennant (1937–).
2 Polly Toynbee (1946–). Columnist on the Guardian and broadcaster.
3 Marina Warner (1946–). Novelist and cultural historian.
1 Derek Jackson and Geoffrey Gilmour.
2 8th Earl of Belmore (1951–). Cousin and heir of Geoffrey Gilmour.
1 Diana was reading the proofs of the first volume of Nicholas Mosley’s biography of his father, Rules of the Game.
2 Andrew Devonshire had joined the Social Democratic Party, an offshoot of the Labour Party founded in 1981. The by-election at Glasgow Hillhead was won by Roy Jenkins, one of the founders of the SDP.
1 Roger Machell (1908–84). Editor at Hamish Hamilton.
2 Elizabeth Winn used to receive letters addressed thus.
1 Michel Mohrt (1914–). Novelist, critic and member of the Académie Française.
1 The Devonshires’ farm manager at Lismore.
2 Elizabeth Farquhar; an outspoken neighbour of the Devonshires.
1 Lady Alexandra (Baba) Curzon (1904–95). Nicholas Mosley’s aunt was the Viceroy Curzon’s youngest daughter and had been Mosley’s mistress before the war. Married Edward (Fruity) Metcalfe in 1925.
1 Diana’s chapter on Violet Hammersley in Loved Ones.
1 Hester (Heck) Loyd (1920–2001). Married Major Guy Knight in 1944.
1 After lasting two weeks of a six-week cure in a clinic, Andrew Devonshire gave up drinking and never touched alcohol again. He concluded a short chapter entitled ‘Drink’ in his autobiography with, ‘To anyone reading these pages and suffering a similar problem I can tell them that alcoholism can only be defeated by determination.’ Accidents of Fortune (Michael Russell, 2004), p. 103.
1 Diana’s deafness grew increasingly severe with age until in the last years of her life she had only ten per cent hearing left in one ear.
2 James Lees-Milne recorded in his diaries that after this meeting, Bryan Guinness told Selina Hastings, ‘Do you know, that was the first time I have met Diana in fifty years that I have not wept.’ Holy Dread: Diaries, 1982–1984 (John Murray, 2001), p. 109.
3 Diana’s granddaughter Catherine Guinness was marrying Lord Neidpath.
4 Deborah’s daughter was preparing a book of photographs, The Mitford Family Album (1985), and was annoyed by her publishers’ lackadaisical attitude.
5 Diary of an Election, With Margaret Thatcher on the Campaign Trail (1983).
1 Diana had written to Deborah (24 August 1983), ‘It’s fifty years since I went to stay with Gerald for a month in Rome. How can one be so old?’
1 Deborah was a non-executive director of Tarmac plc 1984–92. Jonathan Guinness had sent her a proof of The House of Mitford.
2 The replica of King Alfred’s jewel given to Pamela by Oliver Watney. (See Nancy to Diana, 7 January 1946, p. 223, n2.)
3 Diana’s chapter on her husband, to be included in Loved Ones.
* Like I never can imagine anyone else in a theatrical part except the person I’ve seen. Dim, I’m afraid.
1 After Harold Macmillan was widowed in 1966, he often stayed at Chatsworth, sometimes for weeks at a time.
1 Louis Mosley; Alexander and Charlotte’s eighteen-month-old son.
2 Isabel Tennant; Deborah’s 21-year-old granddaughter.
1 Gaston Palewski died on 3 September, aged eighty-three.
1 Diana’s granddaughter Catherine, her husband, James Neidpath, and their infant son, Richard. They were neighbours of Pamela at Stanway.
2 Mrs Clements, a neighbour who was so thin that Pamela used to say that it was difficult to tell whether she really existed.
1 Diana was promoting Loved Ones, which had just been published.
1 Nancy Mitford: A Biography.
1 Jessica felt that Selina Hastings’ life of Nancy was poorly written and relied too h
eavily on previously published books, but she acknowledged that its account of Nancy’s illness and death had moved her to tears.
1 Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton (1985).
2 Frederick Ashton (1904–88). The principal choreographer to the Royal Ballet, 1933–70, featured as ‘the Baroness’ in Beaton’s spoof royal memoirs published in 1939.
3 Jessica was deeply upset by an affair her husband was having with a long-time friend of the family.
1 The missing scrapbook.
1 Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting at the National Gallery, Washington. Chatsworth had lent twenty-nine exhibits.
2 George Shultz (1920–). US Secretary of State 1982–9, and a member of the Bohemian Club, made up of America’s political and business elite, which meets once a year in Sonoma County.
3 William Averell Harriman (1891–1986). Presidential adviser. US ambassador to the Soviet Union 1943–6, Governor of New York 1954–8. Married Pamela Digby, former wife of Randolph Churchill, in 1971.
4 Jerome (Jerry) Zipkin (1915–95). Escort of fashionable women for whom the term ‘walker’ was coined.
1 Deborah was writing a piece for the Spectator ‘Diary’ about the difficulty of choosing the opening words of a book. She had begun work on The Estate: A View of Chatsworth (1990).
2 Jessica’s biography of the Victorian heroine, Grace Had an English Heart, was published in 1988.
1 Frances Partridge (1900–2004), Everything to Lose, Diaries 1945–60 (1986).
2 Robert Kee and Janetta Woolley were married 1948–50.
1 Diana was letting the Temple de la Gloire for a few weeks while she went to stay in a cottage at Swinbrook.
1 Lord Redesdale was chairman of the House of Lords’ Drains Committee and, according to Nancy, had opposed the bill to allow peeresses in their own right to sit in the upper house because he objected to the idea of them using the only lavatory close to the chamber.
1 Lady Dorothy (Coote) Lygon (1912–2001). The youngest of the Lygon sisters whose family inspired the Flytes in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Married Robert Heber-Percy in 1985.
2 The Swedish dramatist’s trilogy, The Road to Damascus, was published 1898–1904.
1 Suzanne Blum (1898–1994). French lawyer to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor whose interests she defended ferociously.
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