The writer Nancy Mitford is best known for her novels The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). She is commemorated with a blue plaque at 10 Curzon Street, Mayfair, the site of her former workplace, Heywood Hill’s bookshop.

Childhood

The eldest of the six Mitford girls, the well-known daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale, Nancy spent her early childhood in London before the family moved to the Cotswolds in 1916. She received very little formal education, but grew up reading biographies, memoirs and letters.

It was her Cotswold childhood with her brother and five sisters, that she would later portray in her novel The Pursuit of Love. In this she famously caricatured her father as the notoriously eccentric and irritable Uncle Matthew.

Early Works

From the age of 18, Mitford was given some (very limited) independence and was able to enrol for a short period as a student at the Slade School of Fine Art. She supplemented her tiny allowance by writing articles for Vogue and The Lady, and in 1931 she published her first novel, Highland Fling, followed the next year by Christmas Pudding. Both were high-spirited stories of life and love among the young and fashionable.

In 1933 Mitford married Peter Rodd, but unfortunately the match was not a happy one. Peter was unfaithful and unable to hold down a job, meaning the couple largely depended on Nancy’s allowance and small income brought in by her writing.

In 1935, Mitford published her third novel, Wigs on the Green, a parody of the British Union of Fascists. This ruffled a few feathers amongst her own family members: one sister, Diana, had left her first husband to marry the Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and another, Unity, a devoted follower of Hitler, was spending most of her time in Germany, 

Heywood Hill Bookshop

Although they were not divorced until 1958, by the outbreak of war, Peter and Nancy’s marriage was effectively over and when Peter obtained a commission in the Welsh Guards, Nancy could return to a kind of single life. She worked at a first-aid post in Paddington then, from March 1942, as an assistant at the fashionable bookshop in Curzon Street, Mayfair, which was run by Heywood Hill and his wife, Anne.

Mitford soon took over the running of the shop and would work there until the late summer of 1945. It became a meeting place and refuge for the literati and was a favourite haunt of writers of Mitford’s generation, including Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and Osbert Sitwell. Mitford would later correspond regularly with Waugh when living in Paris, relying on him as a literary mentor.

In 1942 Mitford met Colonel Gaston Palewski, a close associate of General de Gaulle. She fell deeply in love with him and he became an important source of inspiration, as seen in Mitford’s French heroes (Fabrice in The Pursuit of Love and Charles-Eduoard in The Blessing and Don’t Tell Alfred).

Mitford’s first major writing success came in 1945 with The Pursuit of Love. This funny, romantic novel was also intensely autobiographical in its depiction of her childhood, her marriage to Peter Rodd and her falling in love with Palewski.

During this time, Mitford was residing at 12 Blomfield Road, Maida Vale – she lived here between 1936 and 1946. This building was unfortunately demolished and rebuilt after the war, but 10 Curzon Street remains largely as it was in 1945 with a fine bowed shop front of the first half of the 19th century. At the time of the blue plaque proposal, it was decided that Heywood Hill’s shop was the most appropriate place to commemorate Mitford as the period during which she worked there was a significant one in her life. 

Paris and Later Life

Mitford moved to Paris in April 1946 to be near Palewski – France would remain her home for the rest of her life. Three years later she published Love in a Cold Climate (1949), which topped the best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1951 Nancy published The Blessing, which was followed by two biographical works, Madame de Pompadour (1954) and Voltaire in Love (1957). These were interspersed with some highly paid journalism, most famously for Encounter, for which she wrote her notorious article entitled ‘The English Aristocracy’ on ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’. It was later expanded and published in book form.

In 1960 Nancy published her last novel, Don’t Tell Alfred, which received only a lukewarm reception. She did, however, win great acclaim with The Sun King (1966), a lavishly illustrated life of Louis XIV. In 1972 she was admitted to the Légion d’honneur, and in the same year appointed CBE.

Mitford suffered in great pain from Hodgkin’s disease in the last few years of her life. She died on 30 June 1973.