Product Description

Nancy Mitford was witty, intelligent, often acerbic, a great tease and an acute observer of upper-class English idiosyncrasies. With the publication of her novels, above all "The Pursuit of Love", "Love in a Cold Climate" and "The Blessing", she became a huge bestseller and a household name. An inveterate writer of letters, she wrote almost daily to, among others, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Action, John Betjeman, Lord Berners, Lady Seafield, and, of course, her sisters - a correspondence that lies at the base of this biography, written with the fullest cooperation of Nancy Mitford's family and friends. Selina Hastings captures equally the gaiety and frivolity and the unhappy truth of Nancy Mitford's life: her failed marriage and her long, unfulfilled relationship with 'the Colonel' contrasting sharply with literary celebrity and glittering social success. She has written a biography that is superbly entertaining and clear-eyed, of a life that Diana Mosley spoke of as being 'so sad one can hardly bear to contemplate it'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26412 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

A.N. Wilson
‘Selina Hastings has written a book which Nancy Mitford would have been proud to write herself’

Peter Ackroyd
‘Very perceptive and often very funny’

Catholic Herald
‘Absorbing and vividly written’

Customer Reviews

An irresitsable Insight into an extraordinary Woman
Beware all those that buy this book - you'll get the Mitford bug! Since reading this I've also read biographies of all other members of her family that I could lay my hands on.

Selina Hastings has written a thoughtful and intelligent review of one of the most impressive woman in recent history and done so from a largely unbiased view. From the engaging detail of the
stories from Nancy's history to her continuos grounding of her life within a historical framework - every word entraps you in the magical feeling of actually having known the woman yourself.

I particularly enjoyed the cross-referencing of facts from Nancy's life with how she later portrayed them in her novels.

I'll certainly be buying the Evelyn Waugh biography by Hastings and hope to be equally as impressed.

Wonderful
This is one of the best biographies I have ever read. It is alive on the page - largely due to Hastings' judicious use of her source material, mainly letters, that allows the subjects to speak directly to us. A marvellous, funny and intelligent read.