Nancy Mitford

In 1966, a London newspaper asked Nancy for a comment on the subject of sisters, and she gave them this - "Sisters stand between one and life's cruel circumstances."

Nancy's sister Diana wrote an autobiography which has a chapter for each place she ever lived in. The years of the Second World War are covered by a chapter called Prison, as that's where she was.

Nancy and her sister Decca Mitford called each other "Susan" for most of their lives, though neither could remember how this came about.

Nancy was related to President John F. Kennedy by marriage. Her sister Deborah Mitford married the 11th Duke of Devonshire, while Kennedy's sister Kathleen Kennedy married the Duke's brother, the Marquess of Hartington.

Her sister Diana Mitford married Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists.

In 1933, she fell in love with an aristocratic young Scot called Hamish St Clair-Erskine, a friend of her brother's at Eton, and they got engaged, but she eventually broke it off after realizing that Hamish was completely gay.

Nancy's father, the second Lord Redesdale, was the original of 'Uncle Matthew' in her books The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. He really did have an enthrenching tool which he had used to kill Germans in the First World War.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.

In an episode of the TV show Angel, a flower called 'Nancy's Petticoat' is said to have been named after Nancy Mitford. However, there is no such flower - it was an invention of the scriptwriter.

Nancy Mitford's father-in-law was Lord Rennell, the colourful British Ambassador to Italy who was a poet and was said to be a former lover of Oscar Wilde. Nancy made him the model for Lord Merlin in Love in a Cold Climate.