Mitford Girl who haunts her sister…
She infuriated her aristocratic family by turning communist, gloried in the title “Queen of the Muckrakers” and refused to see her estranged father on his deathbed.
Even now, nearly a decade after her death, Jessica Mitford continues to antagonise her aristocratic clan by preventing publication of a vast collection of the letters exchanged between herself and her five sisters, the famous Mitford Girls.
Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the only surviving sister, is keen for the book to appear in her lifetime. Now 85, she has been widowed for nearly two years and is frail. She has been feverishly seeking agreement from other family members to complete the project.
But her niece by marriage, Charlotte Mosley, who has spent more than five years working on The Letters Of The Mitford Sisters, cannot finish it until Jessica’s deathbed instructions are carried out and her contribution to the family correspondence is published first in the US as a stand-alone book.
Says a family friend: “Jessica had a razor-sharp mind and an immense talent to annoy. She loved to annoy her sisters and it seems she is still annoying Debo.”
A spokeswoman for publisher Fourth Estate tells me: “We are still hoping to publish it but it is not on our schedule and will not appear before 2007 at the earliest.”
Paris-based Charlotte, who received a six-figure advance, has already collated 2,000 letters written by Jessica, Deborah, Nancy, Pam, Unity and Diana.
But then Charlotte - married to Diana’s son Alexander - was told she could not include Jessica’s vast correspondence until author Peter Sussman’s compendium of her letters was published.
Jessica, who died of cancer in California aged 78, fell out badly with Diana over her marriage to fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, never speaking to her again.
Says a friend: “When Jessica died, Diana didn’t attend either the funeral or a memorial celebration the following year.”
Charlotte is understandably anxious to pour oil over troubled waters. She tells me: “There were some contractual problems and I didn’t want to bring out a book without Jessica’s letters. The other book is coming out in September and I hope mine will be published next year.”
Prince Harry’s decision to join the Household Cavalry - and with it fulfil his dream of front-line action - was taken after talking to his close friend Nicholas van Cutsem, third son of bloodstock figure Hugh van Cutsem. A captain in the Life Guards, 28-year-old Nicholas’s father is one of Prince Charles’s oldest friends.
“Nicholas has been a big influence on the choice of regiment,” says a friend. “Harry was very excited by his stories of a soldier’s life in southern Iraq.”
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