Novelist and biographer

She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great). She was one of the noted Mitford sisters and the first to publicise the extraordinary family life of her very English and very eccentric family, giving rise to a "Mitford industry" which continues.

U and non-U

She was an essayist in Noblesse Oblige (1956), which helped to popularise the "U", or upper-class, and "non-U" classification of linguistic usage and behaviour (see U and non-U English) ... although this is something she saw as a tease and she certainly never took the matter seriously. However, the media have frequently portrayed her as the snobbish inventor and main preserver of this usage. She is credited as editor of the book but in fact the project was organised by the publishers. One of her novels, The Pursuit of Love, had been used by Professor Alan Ross, the actual inventor of the phrase, as an example of upper-class linguistic usage.

Letters, journalism and essays

Nancy Mitford's gift as a comic writer and her humour are evident throughout her novels and also in the many articles which she wrote for the London Sunday Times. In the 1950s and 1960s these articles made her appear to be England's expert on aspects of life across Europe. In 1986 her niece by marriage Charlotte Mosley edited some of these works in: A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929—1968. She was a noted letter-writer and her correspondence has been edited by her niece as: Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford (1993) and in The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (1996); also The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952—73 (2004). Her letters and essays are notable for their humour, irony and cultural and social breadth.

Politically a moderate socialist, she somehow kept on good terms most of the time with her sisters, despite the extreme political views of Diana, Jessica and Unity, mainly by deploying her acerbic wit. Some of their letters are republished in Letters Between Six Sisters (2007).

Romantic life

In 1933, after a going-nowhere romance with homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, she married The Hon. Peter Rodd, nicknamed "Prod", the youngest son of the 1st Baron Rennell. The marriage was a failure; her husband was unfaithful and couldn't keep a job; in time Nancy took over the family finances, working in G. Heywood Hill, and was unfaithful in her turn. Though the Rodds separated in 1939, they continued to see one another on a purely friendly basis, and Rodd used her Paris flat as an occasional base. She also gave him financial assistance from time to time. They were divorced in 1958 (although Nancy is described as "the wife of Peter Rodd" on her headstone).

The turning-point in Nancy's hitherto very English existence was her meeting with French soldier and politician Colonel Gaston Palewski (Charles de Gaulle's Chief of Staff), whom she always called "Colonel" and with whom she had a relationship in London during the war. At the end of the Second World War she moved to Paris, to be near him. The largely one-sided affair, which inspired the romance between Linda Talbot (née Radlett) and Fabrice de Sauveterre in Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, lasted fitfully until Palewski's affair with and eventual 1969 marriage to Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duchess of Sagan.

Life in Paris and Versailles

Based in Paris in an apartment at 7 rue Monsieur, VII, Mitford had a busy social and literary life and received countless guests visiting the city. She had a huge number of friends and acquaintances in the English, French and Italian aristocracies, as well as in the international set in Paris. She travelled frequently and established a pattern of visits to country houses in England, Ireland and France as well as annual visits to Venice. Although much of her life was spent in France, she remained English to the core in her beliefs and attitudes.

Nancy Mitford's public persona was remarkable: she was invariably elegantly dressed (often by Dior or Lanvin), she lived a hectic social life, and was a well-known public personality in the United Kingdom even though she lived in Paris. She had a particular "Mitford" brand of humour which became very well known through her novels and newspaper articles and attracted a cult following. Her "teases" were famous, including a description in a Sunday Times article of Rome as a village centred on the vicarage, one post office and one train station. The posthumous publication of her letters has enhanced her reputation.

Her novels, articles and biographies gave her a long-sought financial independence. Financial concerns, and in particular the need to provide for her old age, had been (especially in earlier years) a constant interest. In 1967 she moved from Paris to 4 rue d'Artois in Versailles where she bought a house, but which isolated her from the life she had established in Paris. The owners of her Paris apartment needed it back for their children and she wanted a garden. Her friends who might visit her in Paris were dying; Evelyn Waugh in 1966. Her relationship with Palewski was cooling. From her biography of Louis XIV she also knew Versailles very well.

She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer in the French Legion of Honour in 1972. It was Palewski who formally invested her, presenting her with the latter decoration, when she was already fatally ill. She died of Hodgkin's Disease on 30 June 1973 in Versailles. Palewski was with her on the day of her death. Her remains were brought home to England and are interred in the churchyard of St Mary's parish church at Swinbrook in Oxfordshire with those of her younger sisters, Unity Mitford (1914—1948) and Diana Mitford (1910—2003).

She is the subject of several biographies, including: Nancy Mitford: a Memoir by Harold Acton (1976), Nancy Mitford: A Biography by Selena Hastings (1986) and Life in a Cold Climate by Laura Thompson (2003).

Pamela Mitford (25 November 1907 — 12 April 1994)Thomas Mitford (2 January 1909 — 30 March 1945)Diana Mitford (17 June 1910 — 11 August 2003)Unity Mitford (8 August 1914 — 28 May 1948)Jessica Mitford (11 September 1917 — 22 July 1996)Deborah Mitford (born 31 March 1920)

Bibliography

Novels

• Highland Fling (1931)
• Christmas Pudding (1932)
• Wigs on the Green (1935)
• Pigeon Pie (1940)
• The Pursuit of Love (1945)
• Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
• The Blessing (1951)
• Don't Tell Alfred (1960)

Non-Fiction

• Madame de Pompadour (1954)
• Voltaire in Love (1957)
• The preface to Saint-Simon at Versailles by Lucy Norton (1958)
• The Water Beetle (1962)
• The Sun King (1966)
• Frederick the Great (1970)
• A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929—1968 edited by Charlotte Mosley (1986)

Collections of Letters

• Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford edited by Charlotte Mosley (1993)
• The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996)
• The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952—73 edited by John Saumarez Smith (2004)
• Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley (2007)

Works as Editor

• In the 1930s Mitford edited the early Victorian letters of the family of her great-grandparents, Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and his wife Henrietta Maria, daughter of the 13th Viscount Dillon. They were published as:
• The Ladies of Alderley: Letters 1841—1850 (1938)
• The Stanleys of Alderley: Their letters 1851—1865 (1939)
• Noblesse Oblige (1956)