Champagne-fuelled weekends, costume balls and scandalous gossip were their currency, and Nancy – a lover of both glamour and mockery – was right at home.

Her quick wit and elegant style earned her a place among the literary elite. She rubbed shoulders with the likes of Evelyn Waugh, who admired her withering observations, and other luminaries of the era’s cultural scene. These connections sharpened her prose and amplified her voice, placing her at the heart of British literary life.

What did Nancy Mitford write?

Due to her parents’ antipathy towards formal education, she had no training as a writer. Nevertheless, Nancy was encouraged to write by the likes of Waugh. Her work was mainly for gossip columns and she eventually obtained a regular stint with the periodical, The Lady. Her knack for observing the mores and whims of her social set soon evolved into more ambitious projects and she published her first novel, Highland Fling, in 1931.

Despite modest sales, she continued to write throughout the decade. In 1935, Nancy, whose politics were largely left-wing, caused a row within her family after publishing her third novel, Wigs on the Green. This lampooned her future brother-in-law, Oswald Mosley, and his British Union of Fascists movement – provoking the ire of her far-right sisters, Diana Mitford and Unity Mitford.

Nancy’s novels drew heavily from her own family and social milieu, especially her two most celebrated ones: The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949), both of which satirised the absurdities of the aristocracy with affectionate precision.

Readers among her family and friends were often thrilled to recognise themselves in these pages. Her crisp, ironic style set the tone for a generation of comic fiction about the upper classes.

She also dabbled in social commentary – her famous 1955 essay on ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ speech playfully dissected the linguistic quirks of the British class system and caused a sensation. Nancy eventually turned her talents to historical biography, producing elegant studies of French figures including Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and Louis XIV.

Did Nancy Mitford betray her sister Diana?

Yes – in 1940, Nancy pushed for the British authorities to detain her sister, Diana Mitford, believing her to be a major risk to Britain’s resistance against Nazi Germany.

Diana, through her marriage to Mosley and their connection to Adolf Hitler, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, and several other high-ranking Nazi officials, had made several trips to Germany throughout the 1930s.

She was detained under Regulation 18B (a wartime measure that empowered the UK Government to imprison those suspected of being a national security threat).

Nancy admitted to a family friend: “I have just been round to see Gladwyn [Hubert Gladwyn Jebb, senior British civil servant] … I advised him to examine her [Diana’s] passport to see how she often went [to Germany]. I also said I regard her as an extremely dangerous person. Not very sisterly behaviour but in such times I think it one’s duty”.

This betrayal remained a secret for years – though Diana would later describe Nancy as the most disloyal person she’d ever known.

Nancy Mitford’s personal life

Nancy’s personal life was less glittering than her prose. She married Peter Rodd, the younger son of a British baron and diplomat, in 1933.

The couple found themselves at the French border with Spain in May 1939, assisting the relief effort for the thousands of refugees fleeing the country following General Francisco Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War. This experience profoundly affected her and strengthened her hatred for fascism.

After years of estrangement, rumoured infidelity on Rodd’s part and financial hardship, the marriage broke down and they divorced in 1958.

Later, Nancy poured her true romantic devotion into an unrequited love for the French colonel Gaston Palewski. She spent her final decades in Paris, where she cultivated a salon of sorts, presiding over expatriate life with her signature mix of charm and sarcasm.

How did Nancy Mitford die?

Nancy died in Paris following a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1973 at the age of 68, having lived a life that was, much like her books – stylish, quietly subversive and always a little scandalous.

Following a cremation, her ashes were buried next to her sister Unity’s grave at St Mary’s Church in Swinbrook, Oxfordshire – the village where the Mitford sisters had spent much of their youth.