In spring 1956, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire – youngest of the six legendary Mitford sisters – invited the writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor to visit Lismore Castle, the Devonshires’ house in Ireland. This halcyon visit sparked off a deep friendship and a lifelong exchange of sporadic but highly entertaining letters.
There can rarely have been such contrasting styles: Debo, unashamed philistine and self-professed illiterate (though suspected by her friends of being a secret reader), darts from subject to subject while Paddy, polyglot, widely read prose virtuoso, replies in the fluent, polished manner that has earned him recognition as one of the finest writers in the English language.
Prose notwithstanding, the two friends have much in common: a huge enjoyment of life, youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity and lack of malice. There are glimpses of President Kennedy’s inauguration, weekends at Sandringham, stag hunting in France, filming with Errol Flynn in French Equatorial Africa and, above all, of life at Chatsworth, the great house that Debo spent much of her life restoring, and of Paddy in the house that he and his wife Joan designed and built on the southernmost peninsula of Greece.
There can rarely have been such contrasting styles: Debo, unashamed philistine and self-professed illiterate (though suspected by her friends of being a secret reader), darts from subject to subject while Paddy, polyglot, widely read prose virtuoso, replies in the fluent, polished manner that has earned him recognition as one of the finest writers in the English language.
Prose notwithstanding, the two friends have much in common: a huge enjoyment of life, youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity and lack of malice. There are glimpses of President Kennedy’s inauguration, weekends at Sandringham, stag hunting in France, filming with Errol Flynn in French Equatorial Africa and, above all, of life at Chatsworth, the great house that Debo spent much of her life restoring, and of Paddy in the house that he and his wife Joan designed and built on the southernmost peninsula of Greece.
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Reviews
'Packed with gossip, creaky jokes and gadding about...all but the most inverted of snobs will enjoy a cheery time in these pages'
'Highly engaging exchanges of mutual joie de vivre'
'Altogether delicious . . . Charlotte Mosley's editing of these letters is erudite, mischievous and unflawed'
'Part of the charm of this impeccably edited correspondence is a sense of the lacrimae rerum, of a vanished world of high romance'
'This marvellous correspondence celebrates two of the most important things in the world, courage and friendship'
'Sparkling'
'An impressive array of personalities and dramas'
'Captivating collection ... Deborah's life [is] brilliantly encapsulated -and parodied- in her more succinct letters ... their exchanges achieve the goal of all good correspondents: to bring out the best in one another'
'Last autumn's literary non-fiction hit'
'Highly entertaining . . . as full of fizz and conviviality as a glass of champagne'
'The effect is intensely touching'
'Age never withers the mischievous, bantering pleasure of these letters'
'Bursting with wit and conviviality'
'Highly engaging exchanges of mutual joie de vivre'
'Highly entertaining...as full of fizz and conviviality as a glass of champagne'
'Last autumn's literary non-fiction hit'
'The effect is intensely touching,'
'Age never withers the mischievous, bantering pleasure of these letters,'
'Celebrates everything positive about life and friendship'
'A feast for reading... An enchanting book'