Was Nancy Mitford, master of the light touch, the first social commentator? asks Mary Killen

IT would be Nancy’s 110^th birthday had she not gone on ahead in 1973 but, were she still with us, what tips would she give for coping with the non-Uness of almost every aspect of 2015 life?

I believe she would advise us to retreat into our own cultural ghettoes, keep our heads down, avoid television – was it she who advised that television was for appearing on, not for watching?  And generally keep the perceived Barbarians at the gate by interacting entirely with like-minded people who share our values.  In short copy the life-style of the Jihadists.

“Beastly cousin Winston would have put a stop to that nonsense!” Nancy might sniff.

I know lots about Nancy Mitford and indeed the rest of the Mitford Sisters. It is a source of annoyance to  Nancy’s niece, Sophy Topley, mother of my godchild Nancy Morrison, that I, like so many of Sophy’s friends and acquaintances, know so much more about her own family than she does herself.  We friends are not allowed to tell Sophy when we have fresh nuggets of Mitfordobilia as indeed I did following a trip to the Isle of Mull last summer.  One day our host led a boat trip to the mournfully beautiful island of Inch Kenneth where, peeping through the windows we found the former Mitford house there,  now under new ownership but unchanged outside and in since the days when Lady Redesdale and Unity Mitford had holed up there following Unity’s botched suicide attempt.

Later we discovered a heavenly eight minute Vimeo about the Mitfords on Inch Kenneth, “If these walls could speak – Inch Kenneth”, which I strongly recommend – though I have not dared to recommend it to Sophy [you may watch this charming film above. It features an interview with the late Deborah Mitford].  I suppose it’s natural to be annoyed at the thought that you are always being viewed as an adjunct to famous relations rather than as a person in your own right.  But who can blame us for loving Nancy Mitford’s world and wanting to live in it?  The Pursuit of Love is one of the few novels to trigger tears and laughter in equal measure.  I read it as a schoolgirl.  Then Love in a Cold Climate and Don’t tell Alfred.  And when I found out that the places and people therein had their counterparts in real life, I wanted to get to know people like that myself. Eccentric but glamorous, intelligent but reckless, witty but lacking self-awareness… and all of the action taking place in historic buildings…

Sydney Sheldon, the million-selling fiction writer, said that the key to writing a bestselling novel was to set the action in a big house containing a big family.  And that’s part of the Mitford appeal. Nancy gives us buildings, people and rules of sorts and lots of interconnections. But it’s her wit and insouciance, her lightness of touch, her readability – which was hard, not easily won. But then she had plenty of time to work hard.

One of my favourite Mitford anecdotes (and I’ve read all the collected letters and the Selina Hastings biography) is the account of Nancy, the eldest Mitford, leaving home for a flat in Chelsea in a bid for independence at the age of nineteen.  She lasted about a week before beating a quick retreat home.  “Knickers and pants ankle deep. No-one to pick them up for one in a flat.”

In later life, after the success of The Pursuit of Love,  she had plenty of people to pick up her pants and with no children or husband to look after, could channel her phenomenal energy into creating entertainment for Us.

ENDS

Mary Killen is agony aunt at The Spectator