Nancy Mitford

Witty, waspish and armed with a pen as sharp as her cheekbones, Nancy Mitford – the eldest of the Mitford sisters – was the family’s satirist-in-chief and arguably its most enduring literary star. As a young woman, she cut a dazzling figure among the ‘Bright Young Things’ – a gilded, hedonistic set of 1920s aristocrats and bohemians who danced (and drank) through London’s interwar years with a kind of giddy defiance. Champagne-fuelled weekends, costume balls and scandalous gossip were their currency, and Nancy – a lover of both glamour and mockery – was right at home. Her quick wit and elegant style earned her a place among the literary elite. She rubbed shoulders with the likes of Evelyn Waugh, who admired her withering observations, and other luminaries of the era’s cultural scene. These connections sharpened her prose and amplified her voice, placing her at the heart of British literary life. Due to her parents’ antipathy towards formal education, she had no training as a writer. Nevertheless, Nancy was encouraged to write by the likes of Waugh. Her work was mainly for gossip columns and she eventually obtained a regular stint with the periodical, The Lady . Her knack for observing the mores and whims of her social set soon evolved into more ambitious projects and she published her first novel, Highland Fling , in 1931. Despite modest sales, she continued to write throughout the decade. In 1935, Nancy, whose politics were largely left-wing, caused a row within her family after publishing her third novel, Wigs on the Green . This lampooned her future brother-in-law, Oswald Mosley , and his British Union of Fascists movement – provoking the ire of her far-right sisters, Diana Mitford and Unity Mitford . Nancy’s novels drew heavily from her own family and social milieu, especially her two most celebrated ones: The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949), both of which satirised the absurdities of the aristocracy with affectionate precision. Readers among her family and friends were often thrilled to recognise themselves in these pages. Her crisp, ironic style set the tone for a generation of comic fiction about the upper classes. She also dabbled in social commentary – her famous 1955 essay on ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ speech playfully dissected the linguistic quirks of the British class system and caused a sensation. Nancy eventually turned her talents to historical biography, producing elegant studies of French figures including Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and Louis XIV . Yes – in 1940, Nancy pushed for the British authorities to detain her sister, Diana Mitford, believing her to be a major risk to Britain’s resistance against Nazi Germany. Diana, through her marriage to Mosley and their connection to Adolf Hitler , Joseph and Magda Goebbels, and several other high-ranking Nazi officials, had made several trips to Germany throughout the 1930s. She was detained under Regulation 18B (a wartime measure that empowered the UK Government to imprison those suspected of being a national security threat). Diana and Nancy Mitford (centre and right) with their sister Unity (left). Diana would describe Nancy as the most disloyal person she knew (Photo via Getty) This betrayal remained a secret for years – though Diana would later describe Nancy as the most disloyal person she’d ever known. Nancy’s personal life was less glittering than her prose. She married Peter Rodd, the younger son of a British baron and diplomat, in 1933. The couple found themselves at the French border with Spain in May 1939, assisting the relief effort for the thousands of refugees fleeing the country following General Francisco Franco ’s victory in the Spanish Civil War . This experience profoundly affected her and strengthened her hatred for fascism. After years of estrangement, rumoured infidelity on Rodd’s part and financial hardship, the marriage broke down and they divorced in 1958. Later, Nancy poured her true romantic devotion in