Deborah, The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in conversation at the Frick Gallery in January of this year. She was at the Frick (so much more refined than Barnes and Noble) to talk about the recently published book of letters between her and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Deborah is the youngest and last surviving sibling of the famous Mitford Sisters. She took tea with Hitler, she was best friends with Jack and Bobby Kennedy and she's also one of the Queen's oldest pals. In this talk she reminiscences about her sisters, her eccentric father, the queen's toilet at Sandringham, and, of course, Paddy Fermor.
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6 comments:
That was great. It's funny, although I've never known anyone of her social stature, I have known some women of her era who could spin a yarn or two like that and carry themselves with that kind of dignity. I think that era has passed though.
I still don't quite get her lack of interest in books. It's not that everyone has to read, but she doesn't seem as purely agricultural as she gives herself out to be.
Seana
I loved the story about her father's one and only book that he'd read and the one and only book that was read to him. Brilliant.
Have you read Love in a Cold Climate? It seems that Nancy Mitford's powers of invention werent as creative as I thought.
I read a Christmas Pudding and really liked it, but I only saw some of Love in a Cold Climate, which I didn't enjoy as much when dramatically rendered.
Debo seems to be very forgiving of the antics of her older sisters, but maybe that's a youngest child thing. It was strange that there was no mention of the brother, who I do wonder about. Like Branwell, he doesn't appear to have turned out so well.
I liked the way the young woman played her part in the interview. I gathered that she was a relative of some sort, but it sounded like she was a Mosley and I wondered what her relation was to Oswald. Not that I'd blame her for it, of course.
Seana
Maybe a grand-daughter of Sir Oswald? I don't know. If so her grand-father has a nice literary heritage too as Spode in the Jeeves books.
Apparently she married into the family.
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