Nancy Mitford

Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973) was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist who was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies. Mitford enjoyed a privileged childhood as the eldest of the Mitford sisters, six girls born to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles (1880–1963), namely Nancy herself (born 1904), Pamela (1907), Diana (1910), Unity (1914), Jessica (1917) and Deborah (1920). The sisters had one brother, Tom (born 1909), who was killed in action in 1945. Educated privately, Mitford had no training as a writer before publishing her first novel in 1931. This early effort and the three that followed it created little stir. Her two semi-autobiographical post-war novels, The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949), established her reputation. Mitford's marriage to Peter Rodd (1933) proved unsatisfactory to both, and they divorced in 1957 after a lengthy separation. During the Second World War she formed a liaison with a Free French officer, Gaston Palewski, who was the love of her life. After the war, Mitford settled in France and lived there until her death, maintaining contact with her many English friends through letters and regular visits. In 1954, Mitford published a tongue-in-cheek article drawing on the concept of U and non-U English as a marker of social class, recently developed by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross. Many readers took her article seriously, and Mitford came to be considered an authority on matters of class. Her later years were bittersweet, as the success of her biographical studies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and King Louis XIV contrasted with the ultimate failure of her relationship with Palewski. From the late 1960s onward, her health deteriorated, and she endured several years of painful illness before her death in 1973.