Life In A Cold Climate

The lives of the extraordinary Mitford sisters were forged by the Cotswolds of their youth. Flora Watkins makes a literary pilgrimage.

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IN her old bedroom at Asthall Manor in west Oxfordshire (Country Life, September 23, 2009), over the barn that ‘Farve’ converted to a library for his older children, nancy Mitford is reading aloud from The Pursuit of Love to an enraptured audience.

It’s all part of a performance by a theatre company. The play—which sold out weeks ago—sees actresses bring the six daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale to life, through excerpts from their letters, books and nancy’s novels.

‘Are you a fan, too?’ one man whispers as we file down to the ballroom, where ‘Diana’ is holding court. ‘I adore them,’ he confides. ‘I’ve read just about everything they’ve written.’

Dreamy Asthall was described by Debo, the last of the Mitford sisters, as ‘a typical Cotswold manor, hard by the church, with a garden that descends to the River Windrush… in an exceptionally beautiful part of England’ in her memoir, Wait For Me! (2010). Asthall and Swinbrook House, to which Lord Redesdale moved the family in 1926, were formative in the lives of all six sisters. nancy moved to Paris after the Second World War and fashioned acclaimed novels and historical biographies as stylish and sharply tailored as her Dior new Look suits.

The Mitford name was, however, first made famous—nay, infamous—by her younger sisters. ‘Whenever I read the words “Peer’s Daughter” in a headline, I know it’s going to be... about one of you children,’ sighed ‘Muv’.