Nancy Mitford

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Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904–30 June 1973), novelist and biographer.

She was born in London, the eldest daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale. She is one of the noted Mitford sisters, was an essayist in, and editor of, Noblesse Oblige (1956), in which she famously helped to originate the famous '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 bit of a tease rather than a serious matter. She is best known for her series of novels about upper-class life but she also wrote three well-received biographies.

In 1933, after a going-nowhere romance with homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, she married The Hon. Peter Rodd, the youngest son of the 1st Baron Rennell. (Lord Rennell was a British Ambassador to Italy, a former poet, and possibly a one-time lover of Oscar Wilde according to historian Neil McKenna). The Rodds, who were separated for many years, were divorced in 1958 (although Nancy's surname appears as Rodd on her headstone). At the end of the Second World War she moved to Paris, partly to be near 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. The largely one-sided affair, which inspired the romance between Linda Kroesig 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 (1915-2003), a beautiful socialite who was the former wife of Count James de Pourtalés and a granddaughter of American railroad magnate Jay Gould.

Nancy Mitford was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.

Nancy Mitford died of cancer on 30 June 1973 in Versailles. Her remains were brought home to England and are interred in the Swinbrook Churchyard in Oxfordshire with those of her younger sisters, Unity Mitford (1914-1948), Diana, Lady Mosley (1910-2003) and Jessica (1917-1996).

She was the author of:

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Trivia

In the Angel television series' episode "She", a reference is made about a flower called "Nancy's Petticoat" and how it was named after Nancy Mitford. In reality, there is no flower named after Mitford.[1]

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