Nancy Mitford

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. This correspondence lies at the base of this biography, written with the full cooperation of Nancy Mitford's family and friends. 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.

Selina Hastings is a writer and literary journalist. She worked for fourteen years on the Daily Telegraph and subsequently as literary editor of Harper's & Queen. She has also written Evelyn Waugh: A Biography.

Selina Hastings has written a book which Nancy Mitford would have been proud to write herself -- A.N. Wilson Very perceptive and often very funny -- Peter Ackroyd Absorbing and vividly written * Catholic Herald * An impeccable biography * Literary Review *