Mary S. Lovell - The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

Further Praise for The Sisters

The Mitfords stories have been told over and over again, but... Lovell, utilizing previously unseen documents, explores the relationships between the sisters... and presents the utter fun of this privileged but madcap family.

Allen Weakland, Booklist

A captivating read.

Amy Strong, Library Journal

Lovell deftly weaves together the various strands of her subjects lives, making great use of letters, interviews and unpublished correspondence, as well as interviews with the two surviving Mitford sisters, Diana and Deborah.

Matthew Price, Newsday

[An] absorbing and delightful biography of the Mitford family.

Ann Hellmuth, Chicago Tribune

Lovell rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving together the narrative threads of six at times radically disparate lives to create a fascinating account of a fascinating family.

Publishers Weekly

This biography presents a fascinating family to a new generation of readers.

Lisa Levy, Entertainment Weekly

Biographies by Mary S. Lovell

Straight on till Morning : The Biography of Beryl Markham

The Sound of Wings : The Biography of Amelia Earhart

Cast No Shadow :
The Spy Who Changed the Course of World War II

A Scandalous Life : The Biography of Jane Digby

The Splendid Outcast : The African Short Stories of Beryl Markham

A Rage to Live : A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton

www.marylovell.com

THE
SISTERS

The Saga of the
Mitford Family

Mary S. Lovell

W. W. Norton & Company

New YorkLondon

Copyright 2001 by Mary S. Lovell

First published as a Norton paperback 2003

Originally published in England under the title

The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

For information about permission to reproduce selections from

this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Manufacturing by Quebecor Fairfield

Ebook conversion by Erin Campbell, TIPS Technical Publishing, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lovell, Mary S.

[Mitford girls]

The sisters: the saga of the Mitford family / Mary S. Lovell.1st

American ed.

p. cm.

Originally published: The Mitford girls. London : Little, Brown, 2001.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-393-01043-0

1. Mitford family. 2. Mitford, Nancy, 19041973. 3. Mitford, Jessica,

1917 4. Mitford, Unity, 19141948. 5. Great BritainBiography.

I. Title.

CT787.M57 L68 2002

920.720941dc21 2001044942

ISBN 0-393-32414-1 pbk.

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

234567890

This book is for
Graeme, Shari, Robyn and Imogen
With all the love in the world

Contents

1. Sydney and Dorothy (Weenie) Bowles in their ubiquitous sailorsuits, c. 1892.

2. Sydney the newlywed, Cowes, Isle of Wight, 1904.

3. David and Sydney with three-year-old Nancy, c. 1907. (Nancy used this image on the cover of her book The Water Beetle .)

4. David Mitford worked his mine in Swastika, Canada, for years but never struck gold. September 1913.

5. The Mitford family in 1912: Nancy, David, Tom, Diana, Sydney and Pam. Note the bloodhound with which David hunted the children.

6. Batsford House, which David inherited in 1916.

7. The library at Batsford. A grand house but the Redesdales could not afford to keep it.

8. Seaside holidays at Hastings. Left to right: Diana, Tom and Pam.

9. Diana, Nancy, Pam and Tom with the chickens whose eggs paid for the governess.

10. Nancy aged nine.

11. Nanny Blor, much loved by all the Mitfords.

12. Unity and Decca (seated), 1922.

13. Decca aged four.

14. Unity aged seven

15. Tom at Eton

16. Nancy (before she cut her hair) and Debo, 1923. There were sixteen years between Nancy and her youngest sister and Sydney asked her to be Debos godmother.

17. Annual family photo call at Asthall in 1922. When one looks back at that time, it seems to have been all summers, Sydney wrote.