Nancy Mitford was witty, intelligent, often acerbic, a great tease and an acute observer of upper-class English idiosyncrasies. With the publication of her novels, above all The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing, she became a huge bestseller and a household name. An inveterate writer of letters, she wrote almost daily to, among others, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Action, John Betjeman, Lord Berners, Lady Seafield and, of course, her sisters. This correspondence lies at the base of this biography, written with the full cooperation of Nancy Mitford's family and friends.

Biographer Selina Hastings has had access to Maugham's extensive private correspondence as well as to important family testimony, to shed new light on this complex and extraordinary writer.