Shortly before her death in 1973, Nancy Mitford said she was already making her society plans for the afterlife, explaining, “I’ve always felt the great importance of getting into the right set at once on arrival in heaven.” [1]
Nancy Mitford, who died on 30 June 1973, was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she enjoyed a privileged childhood as the daughter of the Hon. David Freeman-Mitford, later 2nd Baron Redesdale. Nancy Mitford was regarded as one of the “bright young things” on the London social scene in the interwar period.
Educated at home, she had no training as a writer before publishing her first novel in 1931. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also wrote several popular historical biographies.
She married Peter Rodd in 1933 and after a series of miscarriages, they separated, divorcing in 1957. During the Second World War, she formed a liaison with a Free French officer, Gaston Palewski, who was the love of her life. Sadly, it was a rather one-sided affair, and Palewski was never faithful to her. During the war, she left England to live in Paris where she enjoyed success with her novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and remained in Paris for the rest of her life.
In the late 1960s, she developed Hodgkins Disease and endured terrible pain. She died, with Palewski by her side, on 30 June 1973, at her home in Versailles. She was 68 years old.
“She would have been such a marvellous sharp old lady,” said her sister Diana, “dealing out snubs and jokes to new generations. Her life seems almost too sad to contemplate, despite great successes with the books.”