55 Facts About Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit.

Nancy Mitford has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies.

Nancy Mitford enjoyed a privileged childhood as the eldest daughter of David Freeman-Nancy Mitford, later 2nd Baron Redesdale.

Nancy Mitford had intended this as a joke, but many took it seriously, and Mitford was considered an authority on manners and breeding.

Nancy Mitford's great-grandson Bertram Mitford, born in 1837 and known as "Bertie", was a diplomat and traveller who held minor office in Disraeli's second ministry, from 1874 to 1880.

Nancy Mitford rebuilt Batsford House in Gloucestershire, the family's country seat, served briefly as a Unionist MP in the 1890s and otherwise devoted himself to books, writings and travel.

Nancy Mitford's father, David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, was Bertie Mitford's second son, born on 13 March 1878.

Responsibility for Nancy Mitford's day-to-day upbringing was delegated to her nanny and nursemaid, within the framework of Sydney's short-lived belief that children should never be corrected or be spoken to in anger.

That summer, to relieve the pressure on what was becoming an overcrowded nursery, Nancy Mitford attended the nearby Francis Holland School.

The few months she spent there represented almost the whole of her formal schooling; in the autumn the family moved to a larger house in Victoria Road, Kensington, after which Nancy Mitford was educated at home by successive governesses.

On 17 August 1916 Bertie Nancy Mitford died; David, still serving at the front, became the 2nd Baron Redesdale.

Nancy Mitford spent many hours reading in the Batsford House library where, according to Hastings, the foundations of her intellectual life were laid.

The family stayed in Asthall Manor for seven years, and it became the basis of many of the family scenes which Nancy Mitford was later to portray in her semi-autobiographical novels.

In 1921, after years of pleading for proper schooling, Nancy Mitford was allowed a year's boarding at Hatherop Castle, an informal private establishment for young ladies of good family.

Laura Thompson, in her biography of Nancy Mitford, describes Hatherop as not so much a school, "more a chaste foretaste of debutante life".

Nancy Mitford spent much of the next few years in a round of social events, making new friends and mixing with the "Bright Young People" of 1920s London.

Nancy Mitford declared that "we hardly saw the light of day, except at dawn".

Almost alone of her family, Nancy Mitford offered her sister support, regularly visiting her and keeping her up to date with family news and social gossip.

In 1934, Nancy Mitford began her third novel, Wigs on the Green, a satire on Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist "Blackshirt" movement.

Nancy Mitford herself had briefly flirted with Mosley's New Party in 1931, although her enthusiasm was short-lived, and she soon became a vociferous opponent of the British Union of Fascists and of fascism.

The young couple were traced to Bilbao, and Nancy Mitford was despatched to bring them home but failed to persuade them, and Jessica and Esmond were married in May 1937.

Nancy Mitford was much affected by what she saw: "I have never cried so much in all my life".

Nancy Mitford survived, and was sent home through neutral Switzerland.

Nancy Mitford drew on those experiences in her fourth novel, Pigeon Pie, a comedy about spying.

Alone in London, Nancy Mitford moved to the family's Rutland Gate house where she remained during the London Blitz.

Nancy Mitford spent much of her time looking after those families: "so hard-working, clean and grateful".

Nancy Mitford again miscarried, with complications that led, in November 1941, to a hysterectomy.

The shop became the centre of Nancy Mitford's daily activities and was a favoured meeting place for London's literati.

Nancy Mitford found him fascinating, and he became the love of her life though her feelings were never fully reciprocated.

Nancy Mitford was an inspiration for much of her future writing.

Nancy Mitford's visit to France in late 1945 had revived her longing to be there, and in April 1946, having given up working in the shop the previous month, she left London to make her permanent home in Paris and never lived in England again.

Nancy Mitford was a prolific letter writer and kept contact with her large cohort of friends by a voluminous correspondence.

In 1948, Nancy Mitford completed a new novel, a sequel to The Pursuit of Love that she called Love in a Cold Climate, with the same country house ambience as the earlier book and many of the same characters.

Nancy Mitford then began her first serious non-fiction work, a biography of Madame de Pompadour.

Nancy Mitford received hundreds of letters from worried readers desperate to know if they were snobs or merely "common".

Nancy Mitford mainly concealed her true feelings on this separation, although one acquaintance noted her increasingly "savage" teasing of friends, which was perhaps a safety valve: "If she would only tell one she is unhappy one would do what one could to comfort her".

Meanwhile Nancy Mitford had completed her latest book, Voltaire in Love, an account of the love affair between Voltaire and the Marquise du Chatelet.

Nancy Mitford considered it her first truly grown-up work, and her best.

Nancy Mitford then returned to writing fiction, with Don't Tell Alfred, in which she revived Fanny Wincham, the narrator of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, and placed her in a Paris setting as wife of the British ambassador.

Some of Nancy Mitford's friends disliked it, and she decided she would write no more fiction.

Nancy Mitford's publishers decided to issue it as a lavishly illustrated "coffee table" book.

Nancy Mitford moved to No 4 rue d'Artois, Versailles, in January 1967.

Nancy Mitford had long accepted that Palewski would never marry her.

Nancy Mitford finished the book, but in April 1970 was back in hospital for further tests, which did not lead to either a diagnosis or effective treatment.

Nancy Mitford's remaining years were dominated by her illness, although for a time she enjoyed visits from her sisters and friends, and working in her garden.

Nancy Mitford lived for another six months, unable to look after herself and in almost constant pain, struggling to keep her spirits up.

Nancy Mitford died on 30 June 1973 at her home in the rue d'Artois and was cremated in Versailles, after which her ashes were taken to Swinbrook for burial alongside her sister Unity.

Nancy Mitford had no training as a writer or journalist; her style, particularly in the pre-war novels, is chatty and informal, much as in her letters.

Nancy Mitford's fiction, based on upper-class family life and mores, belongs to the genre of the comedy of manners.

Nancy Mitford was later embarrassed by her prewar novels; Rachel Cooke, writing on their reissue in 2011, believes she had no reason to be: "There is a special kind of energy here, and its engine is the admirable and irresistible commitment of a writer who would rather die than be boring".

The gift for vivid characterisation, which Nancy Mitford developed in her fiction, was used to full effect in her four biographical works.

Nancy Mitford's informal style was remarked on by the literary critic Cyril Connolly, who wrote that her facility for transforming unpromising source material into readable form was a skill that any professional historian might envy.

Nancy Mitford did not regard herself as a journalist: nevertheless, her articles were popular, particularly those she contributed on Paris life to The Sunday Times.

Thompson adds that although Nancy Mitford was always a competent writer, it is in her letters, with their freedom of expression and flights of fancy, that her true character emerges.

Nancy Mitford was a prolific writer of articles, reviews, essays and prefaces, some of which were published in two collections: The Water Beetle and A Talent to Annoy.