1 A weekend cottage that Lady Redesdale had rented before the First World War when the Mitfords were living in London. After the war, she bought it and the family lived in it during the Depression while Swinbrook was let.
2 Laura Dicks (1871–1959). The daughter of a Congregationalist blacksmith who went as nanny to the Mitfords soon after Diana’s birth in 1910 and stayed until 1941. Known as ‘Blor’ or ‘M’Hinket’, she provided a steady, loving presence during the sisters’ childhood and was the model for the nanny in Nancy’s novel The Blessing (1951).
‘Blor’, the Mitfords’ much-loved nanny, Laura Dicks. c.1930.
3 In her memoirs, Jessica remembered selling her appendix to Deborah for £1 (£50 today) and that it was later disposed of by their nanny. Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 39.
4 Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne (1905–92). Diana had finally overcome parental opposition and became engaged to Bryan in November 1928. He trained to be a barrister but left the Bar in 1931 when he realized that his wealth was preventing him from being given briefs. His first novel, Singing Out of Tune, was published in 1933, followed by further volumes of poetry, novels and plays. Married to Diana 1929–34, and to Elisabeth Nelson in 1936.
1 Pamela’s engagement to Oliver Watney had been broken off shortly before they were to be married. Pamela was not in love, and Togo was tubercular and probably impotent, but it was a disappointment nevertheless.
2 To help her get over her broken engagement, Pamela accompanied her parents on one of their regular visits to prospect for gold in Canada where Lord Redesdale hoped, in vain, to restore the family fortune.
1 Diana and Bryan had been lent Pool Place, a seaside house in Sussex belonging to Lord Moyne.
2 Evelyn Gardner (1903–94). Married to Evelyn Waugh in 1928. Nancy’s spell as her guest was short – lived; soon after her arrival the two Evelyns separated and later divorced.
3 Sydney Bowles (1880–1963). While they were prospecting for gold, Lady Redesdale and her husband lived in a simple cabin where she did the cooking and cleaning.
1 Lady Redesdale, whose father brought her up according the dietary laws of Moses because he believed they were healthy, forbade her own children to eat rabbit, shellfish or pig. ‘No doubt very wise in the climate of Israel before refrigeration, but hardly necessary in Oxfordshire,’ Deborah wrote in a childhood memoir, Counting My Chickens (Long Barn Books, 2001), pp. 168–9.
Pamela with Lord and Lady Redesdale at ‘the shack’, prospecting for gold in Swastika, Ontario. 1929.
1 Diana and Bryan’s London house.
2 James Alexander (Hamish) St Clair – Erskine (1909–73). Nancy’s unhappy relationship with the flighty, homosexual son of the Earl of Rosslyn was in its second year and although she considered him her fiancé, they were never officially engaged.
1 All the sisters except Nancy and Diana were on a winter holiday with their parents. The Redesdales were both keen skaters and used to take the family to the Oxford ice rink every Sunday. It was once suggested that Deborah should train for the British skating team, a proposal that Lady Redesdale immediately rejected.
2 Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938). The great Russian operatic bass had left the Soviet Union in 1921 and was based in Paris.
1 Jonathan (Jonnycan) Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne (1930–). Diana’s eldest son became a writer and banker. Author, with his daughter Catherine, of The House of Mitford (1984), a history of three generations of the family. Married to Ingrid Wyndham 1951–63, and to Suzanne Lisney in 1964.
1 When she was a baby, Diana’s head was thought to be too big for her body and was nicknamed ‘The Bodley Head’ by Nancy, after the publishing company of that name.
2 There is no record of what was wrong with Jessica.
3 Nancy’s first novel, Highland Fling (1931).
4 George Bowles (1877–1955). Lady Redesdale’s elder brother was manager of The Lady, the family magazine to which Nancy contributed her first articles. Married 1902–21 to Joan Penn and to Madeleine Tobin in 1922.
5 Iris Mitford (1879–1966). Lord Redesdale’s younger sister was the archetypal maiden aunt, loved by all but very censorious. General Secretary of the Officers’ Families’ Fund, she devoted her life to charitable works.
1 Dora Carrington (1893–1932). The Bloomsbury painter, a friend and neighbour of Diana at Biddesden, had shot herself with a gun that Bryan had lent her to hunt rabbits. Two months previously, Lytton Strachey, the love of Dora’s life, had died aged fifty-one.
1 The London Season opened with a ball at Buckingham Palace at which debutantes were presented to the King and Queen. Unity would have been required to walk up to the royal couple, curtsey twice and retreat backwards gracefully.
2 Thomas (Tom) Mitford (1909–45). The sisters’ only brother, nicknamed ‘Tud’ or ‘Tuddemy’ (to rhyme with ‘adultery’ because of the success his sisters believed he had with married women), was studying to be a barrister in London.
1 Tom Mitford.
2 Diana had told her family that she was planning to leave Bryan.
1 Nancy’s second novel, Christmas Pudding (1932).