Changes

|title=Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford The Biography

|author=Laura Thompson

|publisher=Head of Zeus

|date=January 2015

|summary=A lively biography of Nancy, eldest of the often controversial Mitford sisters, and as an acclaimed novelist and biographer the most successful and probably most balanced of them all.

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There can have been few more extraordinary families in British society and cultural life during the early twentieth century than the Mitfords, the six daughters and one son of Baron Redesdale. The only son, killed in action during the Second World War, led an unexceptional life away from the headlines, but four of his sisters more than made up for him. Diana, wife of the notorious Sir Oswald Mosley, never renounced her admiration for Hitler or the Fascist movement, while Unity, who shared her beliefs, shot herself on the day war broke out but lingered pathetically for another brain-damaged eight years, and the fiercely left-wing Jessica became an active member of the American Communist Party. Compared to them Nancy, the eldest and the subject of this biography, seems to have been the most balanced and least eccentric of them all.