Nancy Mitford: A Memoir - Couverture souple

In the early 1970s Nancy Mitford planned to write her autobiography and had started collecting material for this new project. Yet the pain of a debilitating illness prevented her from pursuing this idea and 'one of the most potentially scintillating memoirs of our age was never written' writes Harold Acton. Nancy Mitford was to die of her illness after three years of suffering. This intoxicatingly entertaining book is based on the material she had gathered, completing her project with a fresh portrait based on Harold Acton's own subtle understanding of his friend. Giving a rare insider's view, this book offers a unique insight into a private and hilariously witty literary world that is now long gone. Nancy Mitford was undoubtedly the eldest and most famous of the Mitfords. A relentless tease, she wrote subtle but wildly satirical novels which drew heavily on the people in her own life. A controversial journalist she loved pouring drops of acid on the pretensions of her time. Unfulfilled in love and surrounded by a complex set of family and friends, Nancy Mitford was nonetheless as formidable as the characters of her novels. She never failed to find a source of wicked entertainment. With a keen eye, she turned all those around her - 'the Colonel', the 'Wid', 'sewers' and others - into more characters from Mitford land. Anyone who enjoys her novels will find this memoir equally irresistibly funny.

What was Nancy Mitford's wicked sense of humour really like? The writer and poet Harold Acton was - like Nancy Mitford herself - one of the Bright Young Things and a life-long close friend with whom she stayed in touch from Paris and London. From the letters and materials she had been gathering for her autobiography, Acton draws an irresistibly sparkling portrait of the author of "Love in a Cold Climate" and "The Pursuit of Love", who was so unhappy in love herself. Full of her waspish wit, gossip, and the drops of acid she liked to pour on the pretensions of her time, he paints a fresh portrait that is unlikely to be surpassed.