Wait for Me by Deborah Devonshire

This is the memoir of the youngest of the Mitford sisters who married the Duke of Devonshire. It’s a memoir of a way of life that I think must be all but over now. It’s quite fascinating because first it is another version of the Mitford story and lovers of the Nancy and Jessica Mitford books will enjoy the biographical details of their lives enormously. Because it is a memoir it sorts out exactly who is who in that family as well – Nancy the caustic eldest daughter, Dianna the beauty who ran off and married Sir Oswald Mosely, Pamela the practical one who ran farms and bred dogs, Unity who went to Germany and allied herself with the Nazis, Jessica who married a communist but ended up in the USA, and Tom Mitford, the only son, died during WWII. Intertwined with the family story is the story of Deborah’s marriage to Andrew, who became Duke of Devonshire, and their quest to restore and maintain Chatsworth, one the great houses of Britain. There’s lots to learn in this story. I was only vaguely aware of the Labour government’s introduction of death duties that forced these old families to sell up most of their property. While social justice is one thing, it can also be blind to a country’s history and hundreds of these old places were sold and knocked down and the land redeveloped as ugly modern estates before the public changed its opinion – too late. The people the Deborah talks about, who are part of her everyday life, are the world’s elite: everyone from Aly Khan to Fred Astaire to the Kennedy family to every noble person you’ve ever heard of in Britain. It’s interesting in a gossip magazine sort of way. Her casual statements (‘..a kind friend lend us a plane to go down to so-and-so….’) are so out of our world that it actually stops you reading for a moment, the way serious swearing used to do when you read a book twenty years ago. I found this book difficult to read for any length of time because although essentially chronological, it is still very episodic. She reminisces within reminiscences and the narrative thread is not strong enough to be compelling. All the people in the book become tiring too – you need to take regular breaks to remember come to terms with the cast of thousands. But overall it’s a really interesting insight into the way Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, and her family have lived.