description: Nancy Mitford was the eldest and most famous of the Mitfords. A relentless tease, she wrote subtle but wildly satirical novels such as Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love, which made some call her the British equivalent of Dorothy Parker. A controversial journalist, she loved pouring drops of acid on the pretensions of her time. All the while she maintained from her home in Paris a sparkling and gossipy correspondence with her sisters and friends such as Evelyn Waugh and James Lees-Milne. During the last years of her life Nancy Mitford planned to write her own memoirs, yet the pain of her illness prevented her from doing so. In this biography used the material she had been gathering, completing the story she had meant to write herself. 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 amusement. With a keen eye, she turned all those around her - 'The Colonel', 'The Wid', 'sewers [her gay friends]' and others into more characters from Mitford land.
language: English
title: Nancy Mitford: A Portrait
titlecomplete: Nancy Mitford: A Portrait
characters: Nancy Mitford
genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 333
publisher: Gibson Square